Cold War II

“Today
we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force –
military force – in international relations, force that is plunging
the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do
not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to
any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also
becomes impossible. We are seeing a greater and greater disdain
for the basic principles of international law. And independent
legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer
to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and
foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders
in every way.”

"As
soon as one side comes under the illusion that it is invulnerable to
a strike from the other, there immediately arise both a number of
conflicts and aggression... Not because America is by definition an
aggressive country, but because it is a fact of life. There is no way
around it. And this worries us."

In my opinion,
the historic comments made by Vladimir Putin at the Munich
Conference back in early 2007 signaled the official commencement of
Moscow's reemergence as a global leader and its belligerence towards
the political West. And Vladimir Putin's comment made on nationwide
Russian television in early 2012 signaled that Moscow's belligerence
will surely continue for the rest of this decade. Nevertheless, ever
since those powerful words were resonated around the world back in
2007, the West has not missed any opportunity to attack Vladimir Putin.Five years ago Putin verbally
signaled to the West that Russia was back on the international stage as
a major political player and as the long-awaited balancing power the
global community desperately needed. Four years ago, Moscow crushed the
Western-backed Georgian military to make its point perfectly clear. And this year Putin is back to finish some unfinished business.Needless
to say, Russia's reawakening and its political opposition to the West
has not been taken lightly in capitols such as Washington, Brussels,
London, Ankara and Tel Aviv. Therefore, let's not fool ourselves.
Despite the reconciliatory rhetoric often expressed by Russian and
American officials when they meet in public, we have in fact been in
the very midst of a new cold war for some time now. I call this new
political bout - Cold War II. And as we have seen recently, this newest cold war between Moscow and the West has been heating up significantly. As the global misadventures of the Western alliance brings the world to the very brink of a major war, Moscow
has been drawing a clear line in the sand, and in doing so firmly
defining its geostrategic parameters throughout Eurasia -

As a direct result of recent changes in Eurasia's political climate the
destructive unipolarity of the past twenty years has gradually begun
giving away to a much needed bipolar political reality. Although
there was some talk about the resumption of a new cold war between the
West and Moscow as early as the mid-2000s, in my opinion, the
fledgling bipolarity we finally have in the political world today was
physically born in the south Caucasus during the summer of 2008;
during a historic time when Moscow finally decided to put an end to
the West's "Great Game" in the region by resorting to military force
when confronting Tbilisi's aggressive behavior.

Having
thus regained its composure within eastern Europe, the Caucasus and
Central Asia, Moscow has now began playing a major role well beyond its
borders by actively defending Iran and Syria against Western,
Turkish, Gulf Arab and Israeli machinations.Russia is enabling more-and-more nations around the world today to tell the political West to go to hell -

Nevertheless,
when Moscow suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly resorted to violence
to stop Western encroachment in its vulnerable underbelly in 2008, and
the Western world was powerless to do anything about it, this signaled
the dawning of a new geopolitical era. This new political era was in
essence the great geostrategic significance of that short but
decisive war in the south Caucasus.Towards
the bottom of this page I have posted a paper produced by a Georgian
national for the well known American think tank Jamestown Foundation.
The work is called "The Impact of the Russia-Georgia War on the South Caucasus Transportation Corridor". It's main topic of concern is the new political realities of the energy transportation corridor
of the Caucasus in the aftermath of the Russian-Georgian war. The
paper essentially discusses what I have been saying since the summer of
2008: the
war between Russia and Georgia changed the geopolitical dynamics of the
Caucasus and placed Moscow directly in the driver's seat.
This is a crucially important factor for us Armenians to comprehend
in our attempt to better understand what is currently occurring in
the region.Thus,
from an Armenian perspective, despite what the author of the paper
would like us to believe, it can rightly be said that the political
climate in the Caucasus today has changed in Armenia's favor. This change is essentially forcing Western powers
as well as Turkey and Georgia to sit at the negotiating table with
a "blockaded" Yerevan. After years of ignoring and by-passing Armenia
with all their regional projects, now they miraculously want to hear
what Yerevan has to say about regional matters. Gradually
Moscow is preparing its playing field in the south Caucasus, and I
am glad to report that Armenia today is a major player in their game.

A spiritual calling

Moscow
has a political as well as a spiritual - or should I dare say, an
esoteric role - to play in international relations today. I sincerely believe
that Russia's existence on earth has a purpose that is both physical and spiritual. Russia, as a nation-state, has a supernatural calling for
it is meant to be mankind's last front against a global menace. Russia
today is the world's last hope for preserving apostolic Christianity, western civilization and the traditional nation-state. I'd
hate to think where the global community would be today had it not been
for the political resurgence of Russia during recent years.I'd hate to think what would
have happened to Armenia - a small, poor, fledgling state blockaded by enemies in the south Caucasus - had
Russia fully succumbed to Western machinations in the 1990s.I
predicted Moscow's organic role in curbing Western aggression around
the world as far back as the early 2000s. This was during a time when
Russia still seemed to be suffering from the historic debacle of the
1990s and during a time when Vladimir Putin was still biding his time
by quietly operating under the radar. Today, I'm very glad to report
that the Russian Federation has officially stepped-up to its historic
challenge and is currently the only political entity on earth daring
to stand up to the political West. Therefore, yes, Russia is doing
God's work.

After about twenty years of unipolarity in the
political world we are currently seeing Eurasia gradually being
divided up between two major political camps: the
Anglo-American-Zionist alliance and their European, Sunni Arab and
Turkish friends on one side and the Russian Federation, China, Iran and
friends on the opposing side. This
will more-or-less be the geopolitical picture of the world for the
foreseeable future, and this is the geopolitical landscape smaller
nations such as Serbia, Syria and Armenia will need to navigate in.Major
powers are preparing for the possibility of a major conflict in the
Middle East. If God forbid such a war commences Yerevan will
inevitably be forced to choose sides. When this happens, there will
in fact no options available for Yerevan. Armenia will firmly remain
within the Russian camp, for that is the only way the nation will be able to survive to coming storm.In
these turbulent and unpredictable times, in these times when
agents-of-influence throughout Armenian society have been diligently
trying to drive a wedge between Armenia and Moscow, I want to again remind the reader of the almost biblical importance of Yerevan's alliance with Moscow.
Similar to the fraternal bond that existed between the Persian empire
and Armenian kingdoms of the ancient world, Armenia and Russia today
are destined to be locked in a warm embrace. From an esoteric point of
view, the West today is the resurrection of ancient Rome and Russia is
the resurrection of ancient Persia.Roots of Cold War II

The
roots of the tension we are currently seeing develop between the
Russian Federation and the West actually goes back to the early 1990s.
Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia's Western
"partners" never letup their pressure on Moscow. From a Western
political perspective, the Cold War between the West and Moscow had
in a strong sense never ended, it had just transitioned into a new, more
discrete phase.During this post-Soviet phase, the
political West went to great lengths to ensure that the newly
created Russian state stayed socioeconomically troubled, politically
embattled and militarily encircled. Coveted because it
possessed virtually limitless natural wealth and because of its
immense landmass and feared for its great fighting potential, the West
did not want to see the revival of a Slavic/Orthodox power on the
ashes of the Soviet empire. Therefore,
the geostrategic intent of senior policymakers in the West was
essentially to contain Russia or break it apart if possible and in
doing so exploit its natural wealth.

Preventing the
growth of potential competitors is in fact an old formula effectively
employed by the West (London in particular) throughout much of the 19th
and 20th centuries. To ensure their survival as a dominant political
force on earth, the British quickly formed alliances against any
political entity that was seen to have the potential to grow too
powerful in Europe. Historically, it is no secret that London has feared
Russia and Germany the most. Therefore, the West and friends managed to
defeat the German empire in the early 20th century; they managed to
defeat Nazi Germany during the mid-20th century; they managed to outlast
the Soviet Union in the late 20th century. With
a resurgent Russia now making its presence felt on the world stage
again, the inheritors of the old British empire (i.e. the
Angle-American-Zionist global order based in Washington) has set its
eyes on Russia again.In short, after the collapse of the Soviet Union all
of the West's subsequent actions vis-a'vis Moscow was more-or-less to
promote the old British formula of containing potential competitors from
rising. Therefore, we should all have seen it coming. Similar to what they had already done in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the 1990s and what they would later do in places such as Serbia, Sudan, Libya, Iran and Syria, in an effort to drive Russians out of the strategic Caucasus, Western intelligence services, via their levers in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, began backing Islamic separatist movements throughout much of Russia's southern regions. American and NATO forces also began gradually closing in on Russian borders from western, southern and eastern rims of the Eurasian supercontinent. Moreover, to exploit Russia's natural wealth, financial and political interests in the West were closely collaborating with Russia's artificially created breed of criminal oligarchs. Faced with a catastrophic political transition phase, destructive separatist movements and utter betrayal by their Western "partners", all hapless Russians could do during the early years following the Soviet Union's collapse was to sit back and watch as their great nation slowly fell apart at its seams. The birth of a saviorAs
the Russian Federation reeled from the dire repercussions of this
post-Soviet period, Western political interests began exploiting the
massive geopolitical vacuum left by the absence of the Kremlin on the
global stage. The West managed to exploit the presented opportunity
by using various pretexts to establish a powerful military presence
throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. This was
done throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s. While the West was busy
implementing its geostrategic agendas around the world as the new
millennium approached, quite suddenly, as if by a miracle, things began
to change. The Russian Federation had given birth to a savior. Vladimir
Putin had been maneuvered into power by patriotic elements surviving
within Moscow's security apparatus at the time. Therefore,
during the time when Western forces had begun exploiting the historic
opportunities provided by the mysterious attacks carried out on
September 11, 2001 to further spread their influences throughout the
world, the Russian Federation was already being set-up to eventually
become its limiting factor on the political stage.Under
the very capable leadership of Vladimir Putin, Moscow quickly
regained its political composure, reversed its socioeconomic plight
and in recent years even began pushing back.

Several
major geopolitical successes were registered within Central Asia,
Caucasus, and Easter Europe as a direct consequence of Putin's rise to
power in Russia. Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia,
Azerbaijan, Armenia and more recently Serbia were all placed back into
line. Moreover, Putin's Russia witnessed the flowering of an alliance
between Beijing and Moscow, the creation of a new economic/political
block known as BRICS and closer relations with nations such as Germany,
Poland, Venezuela, Iran and Syria. By the mid-2000s it was clear that
under Vladimir Putin's leadership Russia was on the rise once again and
the world was noticing.

After
almost twenty years of suffering major setbacks Moscow was also
able to finally strike back at the West when in several days it
effortlessly mutilated Georgia in the summer of 2008. As the angry
Russian Bear was rampaging throughout Georgia during the month of
August, all that Tbilisi's handlers in the West could do was watch in
horror. This was the first major blow Moscow was able to deliver
against Western interests at its very doorstep. The short but deadly
war that took place between Russia and Georgia in the summer of 2008 may
have changed the course of history.As
recent matters pertaining to Syria and Iran have clearly revealed,
the political divide between Moscow and Washington today is nearing
Soviet period intensity. A quick look at the materials posted below
this commentary and previous blog entries will suffice it to highlight
this tension. The alarming content of the featured news reports
and various analytical assessments clearly reveal that Moscow is feverishly fortifying its Eurasian fortress and, in doing so, it is drawing a clear line in the sand. As
I have pointed out during numerous previous occasions, I personally
believe that Moscow will do everything in its power to help Syria and
Iran survive the Anglo-American-Zionist-Wahabist-Turkish onslaught
simply because the Kremlin realizes that Syria is one of the gateways
to Iran; Iran is one of the gateways to Central Asia; and Central
Asia is one of the gateways to Russia's heartland. It is simply a matter of geostrategic calculations.American "exceptionalism" or American hubris?In recent decades Washington has arrogantly bestowed upon itself a divine calling of sorts. This self-ascribed calling has been described by various prominent Americans as "American exceptionalism". In
other words, according to this self-serving mythology conjured-up by
Western imperialists, the United States of America should be allowed to
rule the world simply because it is... special! This exceptional
hubris of a special empire may explain why Washington has felt
almost an divine obligation to make and/or break nations in recent
years. The following comment by Max Boot (a Russian-born Jew
who at one time worked for the Christian Science Monitor and the
Wall Street Journal and is currently a Senior Fellow at the infamous
CFR) explicitly explains, albeit in palatable terms, why the arrogant
empire is engaged in wars around the world -

"The US military presence abroad has underwritten the expansion of liberty and freedom and free markets
over the course of the last 60 years. It is our Army, our Navy,
our Air Force, our Marine Corps which defend liberty around the
world and prevent conflicts from breaking out. Their most important role is not even to fight wars; it’s to deter adversaries
and prevent aggression from occurring. They have kept the peace,
in large part, in places like Europe and Asia which have known
nothing but war in the past, and they have allowed for the peaceful
expansion of those regions, all of which has been very much to America’s benefit. The defense budget is actually very cheap by comparison with what we get for it.
We’re spend now well under 5% of our Gross Domestic Product,
roughly half of what we were spending during much of the Cold War.
And for that, we basically underwrite global security which allows us to be the most prosperous nation in the world and benefit from this international trade of which we are much a major part." - Max Boot

In other words, the bloodletting around the world is all about money (of course, American money), it's all about maintaining a certain lifestyle (naturally, an American lifestyle) and it's about keeping the levers of global power in one hand (obviously, the Anglo-American-Zionist hand).
I'd be the first to admit that I have enjoyed the fruits of the
empire. However, unlike the zombified masses of this world, I also
recognize that the American empire became the prosperous and advanced
global power that it is today as a direct result of genocide, slavery, global wars for plunder and the protection its flanking oceans provided it.
America's relative geographic isolation, vast territory and abundance
of wealth found within it allowed significant numbers of people
fleeing from wars around the world to come to America and live the
so-called "America dream".

This American dream, however, has
caused nightmares for tens-of-millions of people around the world.
Ironically, more often than not, those that were flocking to the United States
were people from countries that were devastated by Washington. Nevertheless, as long as the average Joe on
Main Street had a day job, a six-pack at nights, sports games to
watch on weekends and one or two big boy's toys to play with... the
nightmares of others, including that of millions of Americans in the US, did not matter
much. As the empire's political/financial elite pursued their global
aspirations in recent decades, numerous nations around the world were
broken-up and turned into failed-states and tens-of-millions of lives
were ruined.

Yes, we can in America watch three thousand
mind-numbing channels on our flat-screen television sets; yes, we can
in America go to any one of the million malls in the country to
purchase relatively affordable high-quality goods made by slave labor overseas;
yes, we can in America have access to top-quality produce picked by
peasants from anywhere on earth. I may enjoy
these material conveniences just as much as anyone else but my
humanity, my humility, my ideological convictions and my
intellectual integrity will never
allow me to either turn a blind eye to or excuse or justify Washington's
evil actions around the world. Besides which, as the says goes, the
chickens are now coming home to roost. Despite what the corporate owned
pundits in the empire want you to believe, America today is in decline
and the American dream for tens of millions of Americans in the US is fast
turning into an American nightmare.Nevertheless,
instead of plunging the world into major financial crisis just so that
the empire's zombified masses can feel complacent and the empire's
elite can maintain their power and opulent lifestyles, I
would much rather Americans tighten their belts and do without all
their material pleasures they have gotten so used to and live in a world where God, country and
family were respected once again.

Moreover, those who imply that the world will somehow descend into a dark-age without Washington at its head are pathological narcissists suffering from delusional fantasies of wealth, power and omnipotence. The
absurd fantasy that the world will fall apart without America at the
top is a self-serving lie first put forth by senior British policymakers
during the mid-20th century. It is no secret that for the past
century Britain has been surviving merely due to its closeness to
Washington. Britain's political/economic survival today is parasitic in
nature. The only thing that would fall apart if America lost its
preponderance in the world is the Anglo-American-Zionist global
establishment.Ever
since the British quietly handed their empire to the United States
during the first half of the 20th century, the following has
more-or-less been the geostrategic motto of the Anglo-American-Zionist
policymakers -

Keep America in, Russia out, Germany down

When
one gives this formula some serious thought everything that has taken
place in the political world during the last century or so will begin
making better sense. Nevertheless,
unlike Zionist parasites like Max Boot and British officials, I am not
blinded by material wealth or a narrow worldview to realize that
Washington has become a genuine source of evil around the world in
recent decades. Moreover, being a student of history I also realize
that sooner-or-later large empires fall, and the larger they are the harder they fall.
And due to the peculiar dangers of Western Globalism, this
particular empire's eventual fall may cause the demise of many nations
around the world. But it has to fall for the greater good. In fact, the American empire's destruction may be the only way to save the United States of America.What's Washington's problem with Russia?The
United States of America and the Russian empire had very good
relations throughout much of the 19th century. The two powers in
question complimented each other in the geopolitics of the time.
Although American students are not thought this in American schools
for obvious reasons, there were in fact times in the 19th century when
Saint Petersburg and Washington were closely allied against London. This
genuine Russo-American alliance effectively came to an end when the
British empire and the United States began merging during the late
19th/early 20th centuries.Since this historic merger, one of the Anglo-American-(Zionist) empire's perennial targets has been the Russian state.Consequently, by the early 20th century senior policymakers in
Washington in tandem with British officials and international Jewry
began looking at the Russian empire as something that had to be either
contained or destroyed. Bolsheviks were imported into Russia and exploited towards this very purpose.
And when National Socialism in Germany rose as a reaction to the rise
of Bolshevism in Russia, the Anglo-American-Zionist policy implemented
against the Russian empire barely a generation before was used against
Germany. Thus, the
Anglo-American-Zionist global order came into being as a direct result
of the destruction of the Russian empire and the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Nevertheless,
by the time of the mid-20th century, anti-Russian sentiments within
Western political circles had grown to new heights. Then
the sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union some twenty years ago
provided the West with a historic opportunity to become the world's
premiere hyper-power. Since the Soviet collapse, the
Anglo-American-Zionist order has been busy seeking to preserve its
place on top of the global food-chain. They simply do not want
any new kids on the block to compete with their hegemony.Comfortably
bloated with a century of excess, the prevailing
Western-controlled system-of-things in the world can only be
maintained if the financial and political elite of the Western world
manages to maintain its current status as the Alpha and the Omega
of global affairs. Any lesser role for this gluttonous elite will
ultimately cause its collapse, and they fully recognize this
ominous fact. Being that Russia and China pose the only long-term
global threats for them, it is rather easy to see that their main
targets will be Moscow and Beijing. But because Beijing is stuck
in a symbiotic economic relationship with Washington (which may in
fact explain why Washington has encouraged American businesses
to open shop in China during the past forty years), the West will
place its emphasis on undermining the Russian state instead.As
mentioned above, the Russian Federation has been a target for the
West essentially because Moscow stubbornly maintains its political
independence and it controls virtually unlimited supplies of natural
resources. Of course Russia's powerful nuclear armed military is
also a major factor. Moreover, Russia, a Eurasian power stretching
from Europe to the Far-East, is also in an ideal position to control
global commerce and impact political affairs of Europe, the Middle
East and Asia. To the West's dismay, the Russian Federation today may be the only truly independent political entity on earth.While
many in the world today are conditioned to believe that the West
is on a noble campaign to curb international terrorism and bring
"freedom and democracy" (and of course gay-rights) to the darkest
corners of the world, senior officials in the Kremlin
naturally realize that the ultimate intention of the Western
alliance is to merely establish a foothold in the Eurasian heartland
as a geostrategic measure to ensure that no regional power rises to compete with its global hegemony.Moscow fully realizes that the "Great Game" to control the Eurasian heartland is well underway. Moscow
also realizes that the Russian Federation is perhaps the number
one long-term target of the Western alliance. But breaking apart
Russia, which is in fact what strategic planners in the West would
have liked to do, will be virtually impossible. Therefore, for
Western policymakers, at the very least, Russia must be contained
and/or isolated; and they have been diligently working on this by
funding subversive groups throughout Russian society and surrounding
it with Western military installations.Naturally, however, there will come a time when Moscow
will say enough is enough. With territories adjacent to the
Russian Federation's southern regions erupting with political
unrest and civil wars, that time may have actually arrived.Instead
of rolling over and playing dead at the feet of Western/Globalist
institutions as most nations have (to a certain degree even
Armenia), Moscow is currently preparing for a possible military
showdown. Moscow is revamping its nuclear forces and has been
significantly increasing its military spending.
If the political/financial elite of the West is not somehow made
to realize that it has more to lose than to gain by attacking
Russian interests around the world, mankind may witness yet another
round of a world war.For
our children's sake, the political West must be stopped and Moscow
may be the only political entity on earth that is capable of
stopping them.But Moscow is still vulnerableRussian society may not be as efficient,
as refined or as organized as its Western counterparts, but when
it comes to making war Russians are second to none. Yet, despite its martial capabilities Russia remains a vulnerable nation. There are two ways with which the West can contain or break-apart the Russian Federation. The
West can rendering Russia's nuclear deterrence ineffective through
the use of modern anti-missile systems and radars and it can undermine
the very fabric of Russia's diverse and at times problematic society
through the exploitation of various powerful Western levers. Both
approaches are being actively worked on, with priority being given to psy-ops -

“It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that
kills a civilization. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and
disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs”. - British historian and aesthetician Sir Kenneth Clark

“A Two-Wave Experiment found that the way the news media
presents the news can cause political cynicism" - Dutch study called, The Effects of Strategic News on
Political Cynicism, Issue Evaluations, and Policy Support

“[The Dulles brothers] were able to succeed [at regime
change] in Iran and Guatemala because those were democratic societies,
they were open societies. They had free press; there were all kinds of
independent organizations; there were professional groups; there were
labor unions; there were student groups; there were religious
organizations. When you have an open society, it’s very easy for covert
operatives to penetrate that society and corrupt it”.-Author Stephen Kinzer

"A
spirit of instability in government will cause [citizens] to lose
confidence in public institutions. When citizens lose basic faith in
their government, it leads to corrosive cynicism and the acceptance of
conspiracy theories. Movements and individuals once considered fringe
become mainstream, while previously responsible figures decamp to fever
swamps. One result is that the informal and unwritten rules of
political and human interaction, which are at the core of civilization,
are undone. There is such a thing as democratic etiquette; when it is
lost, the common assumptions that allow for compromise and progress
erode. In short, chaotic leadership can inflict real trauma on political
and civic culture". - Senior Fellow at Ethics and Public Policy center
and served in three Republican administrations, Peter Wehner

They have the tools to chase chaos. They have the tools to inflict trauma on political and civic culture. They
have the tools to set the political mood of a society. They have
the tools to sow political unrest around the world. They first destroy
the spirit
through an information war, after which they can easily destroy the body
either through economic/financial blackmail or war. Using information
and money as tools to weaken their political opposition around the world is essentially
what
financial aid (or sanctions) or Western financed news organizations (or psy-ops) is all about. Therefore, it
can be said that for Western powers the notions of
"civil society", "free elections" or “free media” simply means: Society,
politics and information controlled by Western interests.This is by no means a theory of mine. More and more people around the world are beginning to talkabout this serious problem. Please research the following to put it all in context -

Russia is vulnerable, not only from an external threat but also from an internal threat. Moreover, although resurgent, Russia's military apparatus today is a mere shadow of what it used to be during the Soviet period. The
Russian military is going through a difficult transition period.
Large segments of its armed forces continue to be equipped with
outdated Soviet era weapons systems. Moreover, sociopolitically,
Russia is still recovering from the chaos of the 1990s. Russia
today remains very vulnerable. As a result, Moscow is placing
emphasis on its nuclear deterrence; as NATO did during the height
of Soviet power. As
NATO-led forces and Western-instigated conflicts get closer to
Russian borders, the threat of a nuclear catastrophe will become
very real. The following is a previous blog entry that discusses this topic at length -

Moreover,
seeing Washington's aggression against
nonaligned, resourcerich and vulnerable nations around the world,
various governments have begun developing nuclear programs of
their own. Thus, what we have today is a new global nuclear arms
race; and one that is in certain ways more perilous than the one
that existed during the Cold War; and we can all thank the
Anglo-American-Zionist alliance and friends for bringing us to this
point. Nevertheless, Moscow continues to flex its muscle hoping to
make Washington think twice before it makes any new moves -

Disregard
the verbal gymnastics and political spin you are exposed to by the
controlled news press in the West. The anti-missile "defense" shield is
in fact an OFFENSIVE system primarily meant to target Russian
missiles, not Iranian. The Western alliances has more than enough
anti-missile capabilities stationed around Iran to contain
absolutely any missile threat Tehran could ever muster for the
foreseeable future. The Western alliance is seeking to surround the
Russian Federation with military bases and missile systems to
contain Russia and annul Moscow's nuclear deterrence.The great Czar is back and not a moment too soon

Vladimir
Putin has been the embodiment of Russian nationalism and political
reawakening during the past twelve years. In recent years, more-and-more
nations around the world have come to see Vladimir Putin's Russia as
the last front against the Anglo-American-Zionist global order. In fact,
Russia's role in global politics goes quite beyond merely standing up
to the aforementioned global order. The
Russian Federation today is the last front against American
imperialism, NATO expansionism, Globalism, Islamic fundamentalism,
Zionism and pan-Turkism. Russia may be the last hope for preserving
western civilization, apostolic Christianity and the traditional
nation-state.

Therefore, is is quite natural at the
political West fear's Russia and seeks to either break it apart of
contain it. And it is also quite natural that the West would despise
Putin and diligently work towards ousting him. Putin had barely
announced his desire to return to the Russian presidency when Western
news agencies began their vicious assaults against him. Forget all the
nonsense about "reset", what we are going to see is Cold War II at
least for the rest of this decade. Putin's second presidency
promises to be an eventful one. He is coming into office
more-or-less pissed-off and with a long "to do" list. He has unfinished business to take care of. One of them is of course Saakashvili, who's time in office may be running out.
One of the other unfinished businesses may in fact be the
creation of an Eurasian Union economic pact and an alternative
trade currency for Eurasia. Putin briefly mentioned this during a
recent visit to China -

One of the more interesting geopolitical consequences of the post-Soviet world has been the development of closer relations between Russia and China.There is today aSino-Russian alliance.
Once enemies, the two Eurasian powers have come together in their
effort to protect themselves from the serious threat emanating from the
West.Many
years ago I came to the realization that the immense power the
political West possesses has actually little to do with its military
capabilities, which are in fact overly-reliant on electronic gadgetry.
Militarily speaking, the West is in fact a paper-tiger. The West's
immense power lies in the financial and cultural levers it
controls around the world. In fact, real political power travels on the coattails of cultural influence. If we want to speak their language, sing their songs, watch their filsm, purchase their products and live in their lands, they have power over us. In a certain sense, the West's power over humanity comes from
how the global sheeple perceive the world; and the West has shaped
that very perception: Hollywood, American POP culture, Western news media, US
Dollar, National Endowment of Democracy, Wall Street, Amnesty International, World Bank, IMF, USAID... Deprive the West of
these types of strategic levers and watch it go by the way of the Soviet
Union. I do however realize that this is much easier said that done.

Nevertheless,
until the day comes when the West's "humanitarian" and
"democratic" facade crumbles and its tentacles around the world are
pulled back, Moscow will be fortifying its Eurasian fortress against
Western advances.

We are currently seeing increased funding
for weapons research, more frequent training exercises for the
Russian military and faster weapons procurement. We are indeed
living in troubling times. Some
say were are in the preliminary stages of a world war, others say
it has already commenced and that we are simply in its initial
phase. What is clear, however, is that virtually the
entire southern rim of the Eurasian continent is in danger today of
descending into bloody chaos. If things continue to digress at this
rate, a third world war is very possible. Vladimir Putin has returned to power at one of the most crucial periods in human history. I
think we Armenians should all be thankful that at this troubling
juncture in world history Armenia again has an ally like the Russian
Federation to rely on.

The
following are a sampling of news reports and geopolitical assessments
that brings into light the heightened tensions between Moscow and the
political West. Some of the materials featured on this page first saw
light several years ago. Some of materials in question are written by
independent analysts such as Steven Cohen, some are produced by Russian
sources and some are disseminated by Western presstitutes. However,
regardless of the political persuasion of the authors and publishers,
all of the materials provided on this page give credence to the claim
that the unipolar world of the past two decades is gradually giving way
to a multi-polar reality in global politics and that we are in fact in the
midst of a Cold War II.ArevordiMay, 2012(links added 2016)

Contrary to established opinion, the gravest threats to America's
national security are still in Russia. They derive from an
unprecedented development that most US policy-makers have recklessly
disregarded, as evidenced by the undeclared cold war Washington has
waged, under both parties, against post-Communist Russia during the
past fifteen years. As a result of the Soviet breakup in 1991,
Russia, a state bearing every nuclear and other device of mass
destruction, virtually collapsed. During the 1990s its essential
infrastructures--political, economic and social--disintegrated.
Moscow's hold on its vast territories was weakened by separatism,
official corruption and Mafia-like crime. The worst peacetime
depression in modern history brought economic losses more than twice
those suffered in World War II. GDP plummeted by nearly half and
capital investment by 80 percent. Most Russians were thrown into
poverty. Death rates soared and the population shrank. And in August
1998, the financial system imploded.No one in authority
anywhere had ever foreseen that one of the twentieth century's two
superpowers would plunge, along with its arsenals of destruction, into
such catastrophic circumstances. Even today, we cannot be sure what
Russia's collapse might mean for the rest of the world. Outwardly,
the nation may now seem to have recovered. Its economy has grown on
average by 6 to 7 percent annually since 1999, its stock-market index
increased last year by 83 percent and its gold and foreign currency
reserves are the world's fifth largest. Moscow is booming with new
construction, frenzied consumption of Western luxury goods and
fifty-six large casinos. Some of this wealth has trickled down to the
provinces and middle and lower classes, whose income has been
rising. But these advances, loudly touted by the Russian government
and Western investment-fund promoters, are due largely to high world
prices for the country's oil and gas and stand out only in comparison
with the wasteland of 1998.More fundamental realities
indicate that Russia remains in an unprecedented state of peacetime
demodernization and depopulation. Investment in the economy and other
basic infrastructures remains barely a third of the 1990 level. Some
two-thirds of Russians still live below or very near the poverty
line, including 80 percent of families with two or more children, 60
percent of rural citizens and large segments of the educated and
professional classes, among them teachers, doctors and military
officers. The gap between the poor and the rich, Russian experts tell
us, is becoming "explosive." Most tragic and telling, the nation
continues to suffer wartime death and birth rates, its population
declining by 700,000 or more every year. Male life expectancy is
barely 59 years and, at the other end of the life cycle, 2 to 3
million children are homeless. Old and new diseases, from
tuberculosis to HIV infections, have grown into epidemics. Nationalists
may exaggerate in charging that "the Motherland is dying," but even
the head of Moscow's most pro-Western university warns that Russia
remains in "extremely deep crisis."The stability of the
political regime atop this bleak post-Soviet landscape rests heavily,
if not entirely, on the personal popularity and authority of one man,
President Vladimir Putin, who admits the state "is not yet completely
stable." While Putin's ratings are an extraordinary 70 to 75 percent
positive, political institutions and would-be leaders below him have
almost no public support. The top business and administrative
elites, having rapaciously "privatized" the Soviet state's richest
assets in the 1990s, are particularly despised. Indeed, their
possession of that property, because it lacks popular legitimacy,
remains a time bomb embedded in the political and economic system.
The huge military is equally unstable, its ranks torn by a lack of
funds, abuses of authority and discontent. No wonder serious analysts
worry that one or more sudden developments--a sharp fall in world
oil prices, more major episodes of ethnic violence or terrorism, or
Putin's disappearance--might plunge Russia into an even worse crisis.
Pointing to the disorder spreading from Chechnya through the
country's southern rim, for example, the eminent scholar Peter
Reddaway even asks "whether Russia is stable enough to hold
together."As long as catastrophic possibilities exist in that
nation, so do the unprecedented threats to US and international
security. Experts differ as to which danger is the
gravest--proliferation of Russia's enormous stockpile of nuclear,
chemical and biological materials; ill-maintained nuclear reactors on
land and on decommissioned submarines; an impaired early-warning
system controlling missiles on hair-trigger alert; or the first-ever
civil war in a shattered superpower, the terror-ridden Chechen
conflict. But no one should doubt that together they constitute a
much greater constant threat than any the United States faced during
the Soviet era. Nor is a catastrophe involving weapons of mass
destruction the only danger in what remains the world's largest
territorial country. Nearly a quarter of the planet's people live on
Russia's borders, among them conflicting ethnic and religious groups.
Any instability in Russia could easily spread to a crucial and
exceedingly volatile part of the world.There is another,
perhaps more likely, possibility. Petrodollars may bring Russia
long-term stability, but on the basis of growing authoritarianism and
xenophobic nationalism. Those ominous factors derive primarily not
from Russia's lost superpower status (or Putin's KGB background), as
the US press regularly misinforms readers, but from so many lost and
damaged lives at home since 1991. Often called the "Weimar scenario,"
this outcome probably would not be truly fascist, but it would be a
Russia possessing weapons of mass destruction and large proportions
of the world's oil and natural gas, even more hostile to the West
than was its Soviet predecessor. How has the US government responded
to these unprecedented perils? It doesn't require a degree in
international relations or media punditry to understand that the
first principle of policy toward post-Communist Russia must follow
the Hippocratic injunction: Do no harm! Do nothing to undermine its
fragile stability, nothing to dissuade the Kremlin from giving first
priority to repairing the nation's crumbling infrastructures, nothing
to cause it to rely more heavily on its stockpiles of superpower
weapons instead of reducing them, nothing to make Moscow
uncooperative with the West in those joint pursuits. Everything else
in that savaged country is of far less consequence.Since the
early 1990s Washington has simultaneously conducted, under Democrats
and Republicans, two fundamentally different policies toward
post-Soviet Russia--one decorative and outwardly reassuring, the other
real and exceedingly reckless. The decorative policy, which has been
taken at face value in the United States, at least until recently,
professes to have replaced America's previous cold war intentions with a
generous relationship of "strategic partnership and friendship." The
public image of this approach has featured happy-talk meetings
between American and Russian presidents, first "Bill and Boris"
(Clinton and Yeltsin), then "George and Vladimir." The real US policy
has been very different--a relentless, winner-take-all exploitation
of Russia's post-1991 weakness. Accompanied by broken American
promises, condescending lectures and demands for unilateral
concessions, it has been even more aggressive and uncompromising than
was Washington's approach to Soviet Communist Russia. Consider its
defining elements as they have unfolded--with fulsome support in both
American political parties, influential newspapers and policy think
tanks--since the early 1990s:A growing military encirclement
of Russia, on and near its borders, by US and NATO bases, which are
already ensconced or being planned in at least half the fourteen
other former Soviet republics, from the Baltics and Ukraine to
Georgia, Azerbaijan and the new states of Central Asia. The result is
a US-built reverse iron curtain and the remilitarization of
American-Russian relations.A tacit (and closely related) US
denial that Russia has any legitimate national interests outside its
own territory, even in ethnically akin or contiguous former republics
such as Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia. How else to explain, to take a
bellwether example, the thinking of Richard Holbrooke, Democratic
would-be Secretary of State? While roundly condemning the Kremlin for
promoting a pro-Moscow government in neighboring Ukraine, where
Russia has centuries of shared linguistic, marital, religious,
economic and security ties, Holbrooke declares that far-away Slav
nation part of "our core zone of security."Even more, a
presumption that Russia does not have full sovereignty within its own
borders, as expressed by constant US interventions in Moscow's
internal affairs since 1992. They have included an on-site crusade by
swarms of American "advisers," particularly during the 1990s, to
direct Russia's "transition" from Communism; endless missionary
sermons from afar, often couched in threats, on how that nation should
and should not organize its political and economic systems; and
active support for Russian anti-Kremlin groups, some associated with
hated Yeltsin-era oligarchs. That interventionary impulse has now
grown even into suggestions that Putin be overthrown by the kind of
US-backed "color revolutions" carried out since 2003 in Georgia,
Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, and attempted this year in Belarus. Thus,
while mainstream editorial pages increasingly call the Russian
president "thug," "fascist" and "Saddam Hussein," one of the Carnegie
Endowment's several Washington crusaders assures us of "Putin's
weakness" and vulnerability to "regime change." (Do proponents of
"democratic regime change" in Russia care that it might mean
destabilizing a nuclear state?)Underpinning these components
of the real US policy are familiar cold war double standards
condemning Moscow for doing what Washington does--such as seeking
allies and military bases in former Soviet republics, using its assets
(oil and gas in Russia's case) as aid to friendly governments and
regulating foreign money in its political life. More broadly, when NATO
expands to Russia's front and back doorsteps, gobbling up former
Soviet-bloc members and republics, it is "fighting terrorism" and
"protecting new states"; when Moscow protests, it is engaging in "cold
war thinking." When Washington meddles in the politics of Georgia and
Ukraine, it is "promoting democracy"; when the Kremlin does so, it is
"neoimperialism." And not to forget the historical background: When
in the 1990s the US-supported Yeltsin overthrew Russia's elected
Parliament and Constitutional Court by force, gave its national wealth
and television networks to Kremlin insiders, imposed a constitution
without real constraints on executive power and rigged elections, it
was "democratic reform"; when Putin continues that process, it is
"authoritarianism."Finally, the United States is attempting, by
exploiting Russia's weakness, to acquire the nuclear superiority it
could not achieve during the Soviet era. That is the essential meaning
of two major steps taken by the Bush Administration in 2002, both
against Moscow's strong wishes. One was the Administration's unilateral
withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, freeing it
to try to create a system capable of destroying incoming missiles and
thereby the capacity to launch a nuclear first strike without fear
of retaliation. The other was pressuring the Kremlin to sign an
ultimately empty nuclear weapons reduction agreement requiring no
actual destruction of weapons and indeed allowing development of new
ones; providing for no verification; and permitting unilateral
withdrawal before the specified reductions are required.The
extraordinarily anti-Russian nature of these policies casts serious
doubt on two American official and media axioms: that the recent
"chill" in US-Russian relations has been caused by Putin's behavior
at home and abroad, and that the cold war ended fifteen years ago.
The first axiom is false, the second only half true: The cold war
ended in Moscow, but not in Washington, as is clear from a brief look
back. The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power in
1985 with heretical "New Thinking" that proposed not merely to ease
but to actually abolish the decades-long cold war. His proposals
triggered a fateful struggle in Washington (and Moscow) between
policy-makers who wanted to seize the historic opportunity and those
who did not. President Ronald Reagan decided to meet Gorbachev at
least part of the way, as did his successor, the first President
George Bush. As a result, in December 1989, at a historic summit
meeting at Malta, Gorbachev and Bush declared the cold war over.
(That extraordinary agreement evidently has been forgotten; thus we
have the New York Times recently asserting that the US-Russian
relationship today "is far better than it was 15 years ago.")Declarations
alone, however, could not terminate decades of warfare attitudes.
Even when Bush was agreeing to end the cold war in 1989-91, many of
his top advisers, like many members of the US political elite and
media, strongly resisted. (I witnessed that rift on the eve of Malta,
when I was asked to debate the issue in front of Bush and his
divided foreign policy team.) Proof came with the Soviet breakup in
December 1991: US officials and the media immediately presented the
purported "end of the cold war" not as a mutual Soviet-American
decision, which it certainly was, but as a great American victory and
Russian defeat. That (now standard) triumphalist narrative is the
primary reason the cold war was quickly revived--not in Moscow a
decade later by Putin but in Washington in the early 1990s, when the
Clinton Administration made two epically unwise decisions. One was to
treat post-Communist Russia as a defeated nation that was expected
to replicate America's domestic practices and bow to its foreign
policies. It required, behind the facade of the Clinton-Yeltsin
"partnership and friendship" (as Clinton's top "Russia hand," Strobe
Talbott, later confirmed), telling Yeltsin "here's some more shit
for your face" and Moscow's "submissiveness." From that triumphalism
grew the still-ongoing interventions in Moscow's internal affairs and
the abiding notion that Russia has no autonomous rights at home or
abroad.Clinton's other unwise decision was to break the Bush
Administration's promise to Soviet Russia in 1990-91 not to expand
NATO "one inch to the east" and instead begin its expansion to
Russia's borders. From that profound act of bad faith, followed by
others, came the dangerously provocative military encirclement of
Russia and growing Russian suspicions of US intentions. Thus, while
American journalists and even scholars insist that "the cold war has
indeed vanished" and that concerns about a new one are "silly,"
Russians across the political spectrum now believe that in Washington
"the cold war did not end" and, still more, that "the US is imposing a
new cold war on Russia."

That
ominous view is being greatly exacerbated by Washington's
ever-growing "anti-Russian fatwa," as a former Reagan appointee terms
it. This year it includes a torrent of official and media statements
denouncing Russia's domestic and foreign policies, vowing to bring
more of its neighbors into NATO and urging Bush to boycott the G-8
summit to be chaired by Putin in St. Petersburg in July; a call by
would-be Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain for "very
harsh" measures against Moscow; Congress's pointed refusal to repeal
a Soviet-era restriction on trade with Russia; the Pentagon's
revival of old rumors that Russian intelligence gave Saddam Hussein
information endangering US troops; and comments by Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, echoing the regime-changers, urging Russians, "if
necessary, to change their government."

For
its part, the White House deleted from its 2006 National Security
Strategy the long-professed US-Russian partnership, backtracked on
agreements to help Moscow join the World Trade Organization and adopted
sanctions against Belarus, the Slav former republic most culturally
akin to Russia and with whom the Kremlin is negotiating a new union
state. Most significant, in May it dispatched Vice President Cheney to
an anti-Russian conference in former Soviet Lithuania, now a NATO
member, to denounce the Kremlin and make clear it is not "a strategic
partner and a trusted friend," thereby ending fifteen years of
official pretense.

More
astonishing is a Council on Foreign Relations "task force report" on
Russia, co-chaired by Democratic presidential aspirant John Edwards,
issued in March. The "nonpartisan" council's reputed moderation and
balance are nowhere in evidence. An unrelenting exercise in double
standards, the report blames all the "disappointments" in US-Russian
relations solely on "Russia's wrong direction" under Putin--from
meddling in the former Soviet republics and backing Iran to conflicts
over NATO, energy politics and the "rollback of Russian democracy."

Strongly
implying that Bush has been too soft on Putin, the council report
flatly rejects partnership with Moscow as "not a realistic prospect."
It calls instead for "selective cooperation" and "selective
opposition," depending on which suits US interests, and, in effect,
Soviet-era containment. Urging more Western intervention in Moscow's
political affairs, the report even reserves for Washington the right
to reject Russia's future elections and leaders as "illegitimate." An
article in the council's influential journal Foreign Affairs
menacingly adds that the United States is quickly "attaining nuclear
primacy" and the ability "to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals
of Russia or China with a first strike."

Every
consequence of this bipartisan American cold war against
post-Communist Russia has exacerbated the dangers inherent in the
Soviet breakup mentioned above. The crusade to transform Russia during
the 1990s, with its disastrous "shock therapy" economic measures and
resulting antidemocratic acts, further destabilized the country,
fostering an oligarchical system that plundered the state's wealth,
deprived essential infrastructures of investment, impoverished the
people and nurtured dangerous corruption. In the process, it
discredited Western-style reform, generated mass anti-Americanism where
there had been almost none--only 5 percent of Russians surveyed in
May thought the United States was a "friend"--and eviscerated the
once-influential pro-American faction in Kremlin and electoral
politics.

Military
encirclement, the Bush Administration's striving for nuclear
supremacy and today's renewed US intrusions into Russian politics are
having even worse consequences. They have provoked the Kremlin into
undertaking its own conventional and nuclear buildup, relying more
rather than less on compromised mechanisms of control and maintenance,
while continuing to invest miserly sums in the country's decaying
economic base and human resources. The same American policies have also
caused Moscow to cooperate less rather than more in existing
US-funded programs to reduce the multiple risks represented by
Russia's materials of mass destruction and to prevent accidental
nuclear war. More generally, they have inspired a new Kremlin ideology
of "emphasizing our sovereignty" that is increasingly nationalistic,
intolerant of foreign-funded NGOs as "fifth columns" and reliant on
anti-Western views of the "patriotic" Russian intelligentsia and the
Orthodox Church.

Moscow's
responses abroad have also been the opposite of what Washington
policy-makers should want. Interpreting US-backed "color revolutions" as
a quest for military outposts on Russia's borders, the Kremlin now
opposes pro-democracy movements in former Soviet republics more than
ever, while supporting the most authoritarian regimes in the region,
from Belarus to Uzbekistan. Meanwhile, Moscow is forming a political,
economic and military "strategic partnership" with China, lending
support to Iran and other anti-American governments in the Middle East
and already putting surface-to-air missiles back in Belarus, in effect
Russia's western border with NATO.

If
American policy and Russia's predictable countermeasures continue to
develop into a full-scale cold war, several new factors could make
it even more dangerous than was its predecessor. Above all, the
growing presence of Western bases and US-backed governments in the
former Soviet republics has moved the "front lines" of the conflict,
in the alarmed words of a Moscow newspaper, from Germany to Russia's
"near abroad." As a "hostile ring tightens around the Motherland," in
the view of former Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov, many different
Russians see a mortal threat. Putin's chief political deputy,
Vladislav Surkov, for example, sees the "enemy...at the gates," and
the novelist and Soviet-era dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sees the
"complete encirclement of Russia and then the loss of its
sovereignty." The risks of direct military conflict could therefore
be greater than ever. Protesting overflights by NATO aircraft, a
Russian general has already warned, "If they violate our borders,
they should be shot down."

Worsening
the geopolitical factor are radically different American and Russian
self-perceptions. By the mid-1960s the US-Soviet cold war
relationship had acquired a significant degree of stability because
the two superpowers, perceiving a stalemate, began to settle for
political and military "parity." Today, however, the United States,
the self-proclaimed "only superpower," has a far more expansive view
of its international entitlements and possibilities. Moscow, on the
other hand, feels weaker and more vulnerable than it did before 1991.
And in that asymmetry lies the potential for a less predictable cold
war relationship between the two still fully armed nuclear states.

There
is also a new psychological factor. Because the unfolding cold war
is undeclared, it is already laden with feelings of betrayal and
mistrust on both sides. Having welcomed Putin as Yeltsin's chosen
successor and offered him its conception of "partnership and
friendship," Washington now feels deceived by Putin's policies.
According to two characteristic commentaries in the Washington Post,
Bush had a "well-intentioned Russian policy," but "a Russian
autocrat...betrayed the American's faith." Putin's Kremlin, however,
has been reacting largely to a decade of broken US promises and
Yeltsin's boozy compliance. Thus Putin's declaration four years ago,
paraphrased on Russian radio: "The era of Russian geopolitical
concessions [is] coming to an end." (Looking back, he remarked
bitterly that Russia has been "constantly deceived.")

Still
worse, the emerging cold war lacks the substantive negotiations and
cooperation, known as détente, that constrained the previous one.
Behind the lingering facade, a well-informed Russian tells us,
"dialogue is almost nonexistent." It is especially true in regard to
nuclear weapons. The Bush Administration's abandonment of the ABM
treaty and real reductions, its decision to build an antimissile
shield, and talk of pre-emptive war and nuclear strikes have all but
abolished long-established US-Soviet agreements that have kept the
nuclear peace for nearly fifty years. Indeed, according to a report,
Bush's National Security Council is contemptuous of arms control as
"baggage from the cold war." In short, as dangers posed by nuclear
weapons have grown and a new arms race unfolds, efforts to curtail or
even discuss them have ended.

Finally,
anti-cold war forces that once played an important role in the
United States no longer exist. Cold war lobbies, old and new ones,
therefore operate virtually unopposed, some of them funded by
anti-Kremlin Russian oligarchs in exile. At high political levels,
the new American cold war has been, and remains, fully bipartisan,
from Clinton to Bush, Madeleine Albright to Rice, Edwards to McCain.
At lower levels, once robust pro-détente public groups, particularly
anti-arms-race movements, have been largely demobilized by official,
media and academic myths that "the cold war is over" and we have been
"liberated" from nuclear and other dangers in Russia.

Also
absent (or silent) are the kinds of American scholars who protested
cold war excesses in the past. Meanwhile, a legion of new
intellectual cold warriors has emerged, particularly in Washington,
media favorites whose crusading anti-Putin zeal goes largely
unchallenged. (Typically, one inveterate missionary constantly
charges Moscow with "not delivering" on US interests, while another
now calls for a surreal crusade, "backed by international donors," to
correct young Russians' thinking about Stalin.) There are a few
notable exceptions--also bipartisan, from former Reaganites to Nation
contributors--but "anathematizing Russia," as Gorbachev recently put
it, is so consensual that even an outspoken critic of US policy
inexplicably ends an article, "Of course, Russia has been largely to
blame."

Making
these political factors worse has been the "pluralist" US mainstream
media. In the past, opinion page editors and television producers
regularly solicited voices to challenge cold war zealots, but today
such dissenters, and thus the vigorous public debate of the past, are
almost entirely missing. Instead, influential editorial pages are
dominated by resurgent cold war orthodoxies, led by the Post, whose incessant demonization of Putin's "autocracy" and "crude neoimperialism" reads like a bygone Pravda on the Potomac. On the conservative New York Sun's front page, US-Russian relations today are presented as "a duel to the death--perhaps literally."

The
Kremlin's strong preference "not to return to the cold war era," as
Putin stated May 13 in response to Cheney's inflammatory charges, has
been mainly responsible for preventing such fantasies from becoming
reality. "Someone is still fighting the cold war," a British academic
recently wrote, "but it isn't Russia." A fateful struggle over this
issue, however, is now under way in Moscow, with the "pro-Western"
Putin resisting demands for a "more hard line" course and, closely
related, favoring larger FDR-style investments in the people (and the
country's stability). Unless US policy, which is abetting the
hard-liners in that struggle, changes fundamentally, the symbiotic
axis between American and Russian cold warriors that drove the last
conflict will re-emerge. If so, the Kremlin, whether under Putin or a
successor, will fight the new one--with all the unprecedented dangers
that would entail.

Given
different principles and determined leadership, it is still not too
late for a new US policy toward post-Soviet Russia. Its components
would include full cooperation in securing Moscow's materials of mass
destruction; radically reducing nuclear weapons on both sides while
banning the development of new ones and taking all warheads off
hair-trigger alert; dissuading other states from acquiring those
weapons; countering terrorist activities and drug-trafficking near
Russia; and augmenting energy supplies to the West.

None
of those programs are possible without abandoning the warped
priorities and fallacies that have shaped US policy since 1991.
National security requires identifying and pursuing essential
priorities, but US policy-makers have done neither consistently. The
only truly vital American interest in Russia today is preventing its
stockpiles of mass destruction from endangering the world, whether
through Russia's destabilization or hostility to the West.

All
of the dangerous fallacies underlying US policy are expressions of
unbridled triumphalism. The decision to treat post-Soviet Russia as a
vanquished nation, analogous to postwar Germany and Japan (but
without the funding), squandered a historic opportunity for a real
partnership and established the bipartisan premise that Moscow's
"direction" at home and abroad should be determined by the United
States. Applied to a country with Russia's size and long history as a
world power, and that had not been militarily defeated, the premise
was inherently self-defeating and certain to provoke a resentful
backlash.

That
folly produced two others. One was the assumption that the United
States had the right, wisdom and power to remake post-Communist Russia
into a political and economic replica of America. A conceit as vast
as its ignorance of Russia's historical traditions and contemporary
realities, it led to the counterproductive crusade of the 1990s, which
continues in various ways today. The other was the presumption that
Russia should be America's junior partner in foreign policy with no
interests except those of the United States. By disregarding Russia's
history, different geopolitical realities and vital interests, this
presumption has also been senseless.

As
a Eurasian state with 20-25 million Muslim citizens of its own and
with Iran one of its few neighbors not being recruited by NATO, for
example, Russia can ill afford to be drawn into Washington's expanding
conflict with the Islamic world, whether in Iran or Iraq. Similarly,
by demanding that Moscow vacate its traditional political and
military positions in former Soviet republics so the United States
and NATO can occupy them--and even subsidize Ukraine's defection with
cheap gas--Washington is saying that Russia not only has no Monroe
Doctrine-like rights in its own neighborhood but no legitimate
security rights at all. Not surprisingly, such flagrant double
standards have convinced the Kremlin that Washington has become more
belligerent since Yeltsin's departure simply "because Russian policy
has become more pro-Russian."

Nor
was American triumphalism a fleeting reaction to 1991. A decade
later, the tragedy of September 11 gave Washington a second chance for
a real partnership with Russia. At a meeting on June 16, 2001,
President Bush sensed in Putin's "soul" a partner for America. And so
it seemed after September 11, when Putin's Kremlin did more than any
NATO government to assist the US war effort in Afghanistan, giving it
valuable intelligence, a Moscow-trained Afghan combat force and easy
access to crucial air bases in former Soviet Central Asia.

The
Kremlin understandably believed that in return Washington would give
it an equitable relationship. Instead, it got US withdrawal from the
ABM treaty, Washington's claim to permanent bases in Central Asia
(as well as Georgia) and independent access to Caspian oil and gas, a
second round of NATO expansion taking in several former Soviet
republics and bloc members, and a still-growing indictment of its
domestic and foreign conduct. Astonishingly, not even September 11 was
enough to end Washington's winner-take-all principles.

Why
have Democratic and Republican administrations believed they could
act in such relentlessly anti-Russian ways without endangering US
national security? The answer is another fallacy--the belief that
Russia, diminished and weakened by its loss of the Soviet Union, had
no choice but to bend to America's will. Even apart from the continued
presence of Soviet-era weapons in Russia, it was a grave
misconception. Because of its extraordinary material and human
attributes, Russia, as its intellectuals say, has always been"destined
to be a great power." This was still true after 1991.

Even
before world energy prices refilled its coffers, the Kremlin had
ready alternatives to the humiliating role scripted by Washington.
Above all, Russia could forge strategic alliances with eager anti-US
and non-NATO governments in the East and elsewhere, becoming an
arsenal of conventional weapons and nuclear knowledge for states from
China and India to Iran and Venezuela. Moscow has already begun that
turning away from the West, and it could move much further in that
direction.

Still
more, even today's diminished Russia can fight, perhaps win, a cold
war on its new front lines across the vast former Soviet territories.
It has the advantages of geographic proximity, essential markets,
energy pipelines and corporate ownership, along with kinship and
language and common experiences. They give Moscow an array of soft and
hard power to use, if it chooses, against neighboring governments
considering a new patron in faraway Washington.

Economically,
the Kremlin could cripple nearly destitute Georgia and Moldova by
banning their products and otherwise unemployed migrant workers from
Russia and by charging Georgia and Ukraine full "free-market" prices
for essential energy. Politically, Moscow could truncate tiny Georgia
and Moldova, and big Ukraine, by welcoming their large, pro-Russian
territories into the Russian Federation or supporting their demands
for independent statehood (as the West has been doing for Kosovo and
Montenegro in Serbia). Militarily, Moscow could take further steps
toward turning the Shanghai Cooperation Organization--now composed of
Russia, China and four Central Asian states, with Iran and India
possible members--into an anti-NATO defensive alliance, an "OPEC with
nuclear weapons," a Western analyst warned.

That
is not all. In the US-Russian struggle in Central Asia over Caspian
oil and gas, Washington, as even the triumphalist Thomas Friedman
admits, "is at a severe disadvantage." The United States has already
lost its military base in Uzbekistan and may soon lose the only
remaining one in the region, in Kyrgyzstan; the new pipeline it backed
to bypass Russia runs through Georgia, whose stability depends
considerably on Moscow; Washington's new friend in oil-rich Azerbaijan
is an anachronistic dynastic ruler; and Kazakhstan, whose enormous
energy reserves make it a particular US target, has its own large
Russian population and is moving back toward Moscow.

Nor
is the Kremlin powerless in direct dealings with the West. It can
mount more than enough warheads to defeat any missile shield and
illusion of "nuclear primacy." It can shut US businesses out of
multibillion-dollar deals in Russia and, as it recently reminded the
European Union, which gets 25 percent of its gas from Russia, "redirect
supplies" to hungry markets in the East. And Moscow could deploy its
resources, connections and UN Security Council veto against US
interests involving, for instance, nuclear proliferation, Iran,
Afghanistan and possibly even Iraq.

Contrary
to exaggerated US accusations, the Kremlin has not yet resorted to
such retaliatory measures in any significant way. But unless
Washington stops abasing and encroaching on Russia, there is no
"sovereign" reason why it should not do so. Certainly, nothing Moscow
has gotten from Washington since 1992, a Western security specialist
emphasizes, "compensates for the geopolitical harm the United States
is doing to Russia."

American
crusaders insist it is worth the risk in order to democratize Russia
and other former Soviet republics. In reality, their campaigns since
1992 have only discredited that cause in Russia. Praising the
despised Yeltsin and endorsing other unpopular figures as Russia's
"democrats," while denouncing the popular Putin, has associated
democracy with the social pain, chaos and humiliation of the 1990s.
Ostracizing Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko while embracing
tyrants in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan has related it to the thirst for
oil. Linking "democratic revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia to NATO
membership has equated them with US expansionism. Focusing on the
victimization of billionaire Mikhail Khodorkhovsky and not on Russian
poverty or ongoing mass protests against social injustices has
suggested democracy is only for oligarchs. And by insisting on their
indispensable role, US crusaders have all but said (wrongly) that
Russians are incapable of democracy or resisting abuses of power on
their own.

The
result is dark Russian suspicions of American intentions ignored by
US policy-makers and media alike. They include the belief that
Washington's real purpose is to take control of the country's energy
resources and nuclear weapons and use encircling NATO satellite states
to "de-sovereignize" Russia, turning it into a "vassal of the West."
More generally, US policy has fostered the belief that the American
cold war was never really aimed at Soviet Communism but always at
Russia, a suspicion given credence by Post and Times columnists who characterize Russia even after Communism as an inherently "autocratic state" with "brutish instincts."

To
overcome those towering obstacles to a new relationship, Washington
has to abandon the triumphalist conceits primarily responsible for
the revived cold war and its growing dangers. It means respecting
Russia's sovereign right to determine its course at home (including
disposal of its energy resources). As the record plainly shows,
interfering in Moscow's internal affairs, whether on-site or from
afar, only harms the chances for political liberties and economic
prosperity that still exist in that tormented nation.

It
also means acknowledging Russia's legitimate security interests,
especially in its own "near abroad." In particular, the planned third
expansion of NATO, intended to include Ukraine, must not take place.
Extending NATO to Russia's doorsteps has already brought relations near
the breaking point (without actually benefiting any nation's
security); absorbing Ukraine, which Moscow regards as essential to its
Slavic identity and its military defense, may be the point of no
return, as even pro-US Russians anxiously warn. Nor would it be
democratic, since nearly two-thirds of Ukrainians are opposed. The
explosive possibilities were adumbrated in late May and early June
when local citizens in ethnic Russian Crimea blockaded a port and
roads where a US naval ship and contingent of Marines suddenly
appeared, provoking resolutions declaring the region "anti-NATO
territory" and threats of "a new Vietnam."

Time
for a new US policy is running out, but there is no hint of one in
official or unofficial circles. Denouncing the Kremlin in May, Cheney
spoke "like a triumphant cold warrior," a Times correspondent
reported. A top State Department official has already announced the
"next great mission" in and around Russia. In the same unreconstructed
spirit, Rice has demanded Russians "recognize that we have
legitimate interests...in their neighborhood," without a word about
Moscow's interests; and a former Clinton official has held the
Kremlin "accountable for the ominous security threats...developing
between NATO's eastern border and Russia." Meanwhile, the Bush
Administration is playing Russian roulette with Moscow's control of
its nuclear weapons. Its missile shield project having already
provoked a destabilizing Russian buildup, the Administration now
proposes to further confuse Moscow's early-warning system, risking an
accidental launch, by putting conventional warheads on long-range
missiles for the first time.

In
a democracy we might expect alternative policy proposals from
would-be leaders. But there are none in either party, only demands for
a more anti-Russian course, or silence. We should not be surprised.
Acquiescence in Bush's monstrous war in Iraq has amply demonstrated
the political elite's limited capacity for introspection, independent
thought and civic courage. (It prefers to falsely blame the American
people, as the managing editor of Foreign Affairs recently
did, for craving "ideological red meat.") It may also be intimidated
by another revived cold war practice--personal defamation. The Post and The New Yorker
have already labeled critics of their Russia policy "Putin
apologists" and charged them with "appeasement" and "again taking the
Russian side of the Cold War."

The
vision and courage of heresy will therefore be needed to escape
today's new cold war orthodoxies and dangers, but it is hard to imagine
a US politician answering the call. There is, however, a
not-too-distant precedent. Twenty years ago, when the world faced
exceedingly grave cold war perils, Gorbachev unexpectedly emerged from
the orthodox and repressive Soviet political class to offer a
heretical way out. Is there an American leader today ready to retrieve
that missed opportunity?

Vladimir
Putin reclaiming Russia's presidency will probably exacerbate
tensions with the U.S. and Europe as they try to rein in Iran's
nuclear ambitions and halt bloodshed in Syria, strategists from Moscow
to New York said. As Putin celebrated six more years in office after
his electoral victory on March 4, he thanked supporters for backing a
"Great Russia." The U.S. State Department responded by choosing not
to congratulate him and calling for a "credible" investigation into
allegations of electoral fraud.

"Putin
understands geopolitics in terms of a zero-sum competition with
Western, particularly U.S., interests," Jenia Ustinova and Alexander
Kliment of Eurasia Group in New York said by e-mail. "After four years
of a relatively more accommodating stance under President Medvedev,
the tone of Moscow's foreign policy toward the West is set to change."

The
Russian leader's return to the Kremlin gives him the opportunity to
stymie U.S. and European policy in the oil-rich Middle East at a time
when the region is being buffeted by civil war in Syria and the
threat of an Israeli military strike against Iran. Russia reiterated
yesterday that it won't support any international interference aimed
at toppling Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad amid a government crackdown
that has killed more than 7,500 people according to the United
Nations. Putin said Feb. 24 that the West is seeking to bring about a
regime change in Iran under the guise of halting its nuclear-arms
ambitions.

Can't 'Push'

In
the weeks leading up to his re-election with 64 percent of the vote,
Putin rekindled the anti-American rhetoric that characterized his
first eight years in the Kremlin from 2000- 2008, accusing the U.S. of
seeking "vassals" rather than allies and criticizing plans to place
elements of a missile- defense shield in eastern Europe.

"Security
in the world can only be achieved with Russia and not by trying to
push her around and weaken her geopolitical position," Putin said in a
Feb. 27 pre-election manifesto on foreign policy. Russia will spend
23 trillion rubles ($774 billion) over the next decade to upgrade its
military with the latest weaponry, he said in a Feb. 20 article in
the government's Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper.

Outgoing
President Dmitry Medvedev sought to improve ties with the U.S. after
taking over from Putin in 2008. The two countries signed an
agreement on a new nuclear arms reduction pact and negotiated
Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization after an 18-year
wait.

Iran Stance

While
Russia is against military action or increased sanctions in Iran, it
backed European Union foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton's call
yesterday for the Persian Gulf state to reach a "full settlement"
clarifying questions about its nuclear program. Russia is one of the
six countries including the U.S., France, China, the U.K. and Germany
that are negotiating with Iran. Medvedev also allowed a United Nations
resolution authorizing NATO military action to protect civilians that
led to the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi last year.

The
Libyan vote nevertheless sparked a spat between Medvedev and Putin
and, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's campaign went on,
prompted accusations in Russia that the military alliance was abusing
the UN mandate for regime change. The drive to depose Qaddafi after
Medvedev's gesture confirmed to Putin his "very mistrustful" approach
toward the U.S., according to Fyodor Lukyanov, an analyst at the
Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow.

'Little Reason'

Putin
in a March 1 meeting with foreign journalists described Qaddafi, who
ruled his country for four decades, as "absolutely deranged and
obsolete," while denouncing the violence and chaos that followed his
ouster. Tribal leaders in eastern Libya, where most of the country's
oil is concentrated, said yesterday they want to rule themselves apart
from defense and foreign affairs. There's "little reason" to expect
Moscow to soften its stance on Iran or Syria post-election, according to
Eurasia.

Since
the Libyan vote, Russia has vetoed a UN resolution proposed by
Western and Arab nations to usher out Assad, while Putin has warned
that a military strike on Iran would be "truly catastrophic" and said
foreign powers back protests against his rule. Russia opposes a new
UN resolution on Syria proposed by the U.S. because it's a "slightly
modified version" of the draft it vetoed last month, Deputy Foreign
Minister Gennady Gatilov said yesterday.

Losing Arms Sales

Russia
is losing arms sales to the Middle East as a result of the toppling
of autocratic regimes in the region sparked by the 'Arab Spring.' It
surrendered $4 billion in weapons contracts with Libya after
Qaddafi's overthrow, Sergey Chemezov, head of state-run Russian
Technologies Corp. said this month. The country expects to surpass
this year the record $12 billion in arms exports in 2011, Chemezov
told the Interfax news service on Jan. 25. Total exports of goods
exceeded $500 billion last year, central bank data show. Russia has
about $3.5 billion of arms deals with Syria, according to the Center
for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow.

Russia's
disagreement with the U.S. and European powers over Libya and Syria
also reflects its frustration with "Western interventionist policies"
that are reminiscent of so- called "color revolutions" backed by the
West in Georgia and Ukraine in 2003 and 2004, Lilit Gevorgyan,
Russia analyst at IHS Global Insight in London, said by e-mail.

Anti-U.S. Rhetoric

"The
level of anti-U.S. rhetoric is linked to the elections but not
entirely driven by it," Gevorgyan said. "Putin's anti-U.S. stance is
also shaped by Washington's policy. The U.S. has refused a Russian
demand for legally binding guarantees that its planned missile
defense-shield won't be aimed against Russia. Deputy Foreign Minister
Sergei Ryabkov said yesterday that Russia may pull out of a
NATO-Russia summit in Chicago unless the missile shield was on the
agenda.

Putin in
2004 supported a pro-Russian candidate in Ukraine against the
Western-backed opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who came to power
after mass protests over election fraud. In August 2008, a few months
after Medvedev took over as president, Russia fought a war with
Georgia, a U.S. ally that was seeking to enter NATO. At the same time,
Russian foreign policy is "pragmatic," according to Gevorgyan. Even
under Medvedev's presidency, Putin kept the upper hand on foreign
policy and the "reset" in ties with the U.S. "couldn't have happened
without his approval," she said.

Europe Magnanimous

While
the U.S. declined to celebrate his win, leaders in the European
Union, which relies on Russia for a quarter of its gas consumption,
were more magnanimous. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy all
congratulated Putin as Merkel said she wants Germany and Russia to
continue a "close" relationship. Cameron's spokesman, Steve Field, said
the Russian leader had won a "decisive" victory, even as observers
from the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe said that
Putin's win was unfair. The U.K. wants to continue "constructive"
ties with Russia, he said.

The
U.S. and European Union will need Russia's cooperation and have to
accept Putin's rule, Tony Brenton, the U.K. ambassador to Russia from
2004 to 2008, said by phone. The EU relies on Russian state gas
exporter OAO Gazprom for about a quarter of its natural gas, while
Russia needs Western investment and technology transfer to modernize
its economy. "Like it or not, we have to do business with the Russian
government, whoever is in power and however they got there," he said.

According
to the Obama Administration, the U.S. is not competing with Russia for
global influence. Unfortunately, Moscow has not received this memo.
Instead, Russia attempts to extend its influence to constrain U.S.
policy. Russian leaders like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov habitually
invoke a “polycentric” or multipolar model of the world, with Russia
working with her partners toward a future where U.S. power is so
diminished that it cannot act without Moscow’s permission.

Moscow
has continuously promoted in word and deed the idea that there is or
should be a multipolar world order that constrains U.S. foreign
policies. Moscow’s concept of multipolarity entails an uncontested
sphere of Russian influence in the CIS and with key actors in
critically important regions: Europe, East Asia, the Middle East, and
Latin America.

Anti-American Partnerships

Moscow
has formed partnerships with China, Iran, and Venezuela to prevent the
U.S. from consolidating a regional order under its auspices. Like the
U.S.S.R, its predecessor and inspiration, today’s Russia pursues key
allies in the Middle East and Latin America, such as Syria, Iran, and
Venezuela, with whom it can jointly frustrate American and Western
efforts to consolidate a peaceful regional order. Such partners may
resist U.S. policies and actively counter them to distract the U.S.,
force the U.S. to accommodate Russian interests, or compel an American
retreat.

In East Asia, Moscow
joins China to advocate “a new Asian security order” based on “mutual
trust, mutual benefit, equality, and cooperation.”[1]
According to the two great powers, all states would respect each
other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, not criticize their
domestic politics, and support each other on outstanding territorial
issues. To translate:
Beijing, Moscow, and their allies will respect Russia’s claims to the
Kurile Islands (the Northern Territories) and Georgian territories of
Abkhazia/South Ossetia, as well as China’s claims to Xinjiang, Taiwan,
and Tibet; China’s territorial claims against Japan regarding the
Senkaku Islands; and possibly even China’s claims on the Spratly
Islands.

Both countries also
support non-alliance principles, equal and transparent security
frameworks, and equal and indivisible security. Russia also seeks
India’s assent to this formulation and covertly solicits Japan’s
endorsement—even as it humiliates Japan over the Kurile Islands, a sure
sign of Moscow’s endemic desire to play both sides against the middle
and its fundamentally anti-liberal and anti-American orientation. The
proposal’s vagueness benefits only Russia and China and squarely
denounces the U.S. alliance system in Asia. Ultimately, Russia’s
concept of Asian, if not global, multipolarity is self-serving.

Moreover,
the joint proposal resembles Russia’s equally self-serving,
anti-American, and Anti-NATO proposal for a European Security treaty of
2009–2010. Moscow even applies the same rhetoric to this Asian
security proposal that is present in its European Security Treaty
draft. At the International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-La
Dialogue conference in Singapore in 2011, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei
Ivanov said:

Russian–Chinese
proposals are aimed at helping the countries of the region to realize
that security is indivisible and at abandoning attempts to strengthen
one’s security at the expense of others. New regional security
architecture should be based on the universal principles of
international law, non‑aligned approaches, confidence and openness,
with due regard to the diversity of the APR and an emerging polycentric
balance of forces.[2]

The Unsavory Clients: Tehran, Damascus, Caracas

In
addition to diplomatic support for China, Russia has sold Iran, Syria,
and Venezuela large amounts of weapons. Despite the laudable
cancellation of the S-300 air defense missiles sale to Iran, Moscow
still preserves the option of selling other weapons to Tehran. It
signed major energy deals with Tehran in 2010 and this summer has
advocated easing sanctions on Iran provided it cooperates with the
International Atomic Energy Agency—an institution that has long since
demonstrated how easily Iran can deceive it concerning its nuclear
program.

Moscow clearly wants
to retain ties to Iran, which it regards as the rising great power in
the Gulf and Middle East and with whom it wants to collaborate against
any Western effort to consolidate a peaceful order. Moscow has sold
weapons such as anti-tank missiles to Iran and Syria, and these weapons
continue to migrate to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Russia
defends Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime despite its bloody
repression of its own citizens. This is, among other reasons, because
Russia has signed an agreement with Syria to return Soviet naval bases
in Latakiye and Tartus to Russian control. Therefore, Russia obstructs
U.N. resolutions of censure against Syria. French diplomats who
negotiated with Russia believe that Moscow most fears the loss of
another ally in the Middle East.

Moscow
has also sold billions in weapons to Hugo Chávez’s regime in
Venezuela, including fighter jets, tanks, and whole Kalashnikov assault
rifle factories. Chávez used his increasing military power to aid the
terrorist group FARC directly and run narcotics from West Africa and
Latin America into Central and North America.

The
notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, who now awaits trial in a New York
federal court, was caught offering to sell weapons to the FARC. Given
Bout’s longstanding connections to senior officials of the Russian
government, Moscow moved heaven and earth to prevent his extradition
from Thailand, where he was arrested, to the U.S. It is quite likely
that Bout’s weapons would have been earmarked for the FARC and/or
similar narco-terrorists throughout Latin America.

Likewise,
Russia has been China’s largest source of foreign weapons since 1990,
even though those sales have declined due to Russian fears about
Chinese intentions and anger over Chinese piracy and subsequent sale of
weapons in competition with Russia in third-party markets.
Nevertheless, arms sales and advanced technology transfers from Russia
to China still occur.

What Should the U.S. Do?

The
optics of Moscow’s ties to anti-American states, which build power to
challenge the U.S. regionally and support and control extensive
terrorist and intelligence networks, clash dramatically with the optics
of the Obama Administration’s “reset.” Tehran, Damascus, and Caracas
have an interest in destabilizing their regions and in acquiring
advanced conventional—and likely nuclear—weapons. Such proliferation
makes for a most problematic multipolarity, which piles up obstacles to
U.S. interests and security.

Despite
the “reset,” it is in U.S. interests to find out to what degree Moscow
orchestrates or participates in joint activities among these
problematic states, including arms sales from Iran and Syria to Hamas
and Hezbollah. Moscow surely knows of the expansion of the Iranian
intelligence, military, economic, and political infrastructure in Iraq,
as well as Iran’s ties to Venezuela and those two states’ collaboration
in uranium prospecting.

U.S.
policymakers should reassess the “reset” and develop regional
strategies that counter Russia’s (and China’s) agendas. Such policies
should increase pressure on Iran, the most anti-American regional
power, and cause the Assad regime in Syria and the Chávez government in
Venezuela to stop supporting terrorism.

The Trying Times Ahead

A
“reset” policy that ignores Russia’s global efforts to undermine the
U.S. recalls the ill-fated détente of the 1970s. It ran aground on
Russian expansionism and wars in the Third World, especially
Afghanistan. Despite profound changes since then, Russia’s basic
anti-American strategic orientation, “reset” rhetoric aside, seems to be
the same. In the trying times ahead, when it comes to global
challenges, the U.S. should relearn and practice international
balance-of-power politics.

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.,
is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and
International Energy Policy in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for
Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom
Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.Stephen J. Blank, Ph.D., is Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army War College.

Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin charged Monday that the United States
pursues its interests to the detriment of world security and served
notice Russia would continue to oppose this if he returns to the
Kremlin. At the same time, however, Putin stated that close and
trusting relations between Moscow and Washington were of signal
importance for the world in turbulent times and made clear Russia
wanted such ties if based on mutual respect.

In an lengthy article published in the daily Moskovskiye Novosti
a week ahead of presidential elections he is widely expected to
win, Putin outlined a broad vision of how he sees Russia’s place in
the world and how he would aim to fortify it. Putin took direct
aim at US plans to place elements of a missile defense system in Europe
near Russia’s borders and expressed exasperation at what he
described as Washington’s stubborn refusal to take Moscow’s worries
into account on it.

“I
would not mention this topic if these games were not taking place
right on Russia’s borders, if they had not undermined our security,
if they did not work against stability in the world,” Putin wrote.
“Our arguments are well known and I will not rehash them again.
But unfortunately, they are not accepted by our Western partners.”

Russia
has long said that the US missile plans pose a direct threat to
Russia’s nuclear deterrent. The United States denies this and
asserts the planned system is designed to thwart missiles launched
by “rogue” states. The US-led NATO alliance, Putin said, had
expanded to take in new members close to Russia, had overreached
its authority in regulating international affairs and was
establishing “facts on the ground” before the post-Cold War
relationship between the bloc and Moscow could be worked out.

Putin
said he agreed with those who argue that upholding human rights
is the top obligation of sovereign states and said crimes against
humanity should be punished by international courts. Arguing
however that the need to protect human rights justified outside
military intervention in sovereign states without UN approval
resulted in deaths, violation of those same human rights and
unpredictable consequences, Putin wrote. “Then we’re not talking
about a noble cause but about elementary demagoguery,” he said.

The
59-year-old Russian leader expressed particular aversion to what
he described as a concept of security among NATO members and
particularly the United States which “fundamentally differs from
ours.” ““The Americans are obsessed with the idea of ensuring their
absolute invulnerability – a thing, I would point out, that is
utopian and achievable neither from a technological nor a
geopolitical standpoint. “And herein lies the problem. Absolute
invulnerability for one means absolute vulnerability for all the
others. It is impossible to agree with this perspective.”

Addressing the unrest in the Arab world, Putin said Russia would not permit a “Libyan scenario” to take place in Syria,
where he said Moscow wanted to see an immediate halt in violence
and a national dialogue to resolve the crisis. He defended the decision by Russia and China to veto a resolution
earlier this month pushed by Washington and its European and Arab
allies that Moscow said would have opened the door to foreign
military intervention in Syria.

Russia
in particular faced blistering criticism that “bordered on
hysterical” from Western countries for its decision, Putin said, adding
that Moscow strongly hoped the United States and others would not
resort to force in Syria without UN approval. Referring more
widely to the Arab Spring, Putin said that efforts backed by the
United States and the West to bring about “democracy with the help
of violent methods” were unpredictable and often led to precisely
the opposite result.

“Certain
forces, including religious extremists, are emerging who are
trying to change the direction of development of these countries
and the secular nature of their governments,” he said.

Putin
noted the importance that social networks and mobile devices had
played in uprisings in several Arab states last year and said “soft
power” had been used by states to advance their foreign policy
goals there without resorting to force. At the same time, he
warned, “soft power” and new communication methods were used to
provoke extremism, separatism, nationalism, to manipulate public
opinion and “interfere directly in the internal affairs of
sovereign states.”

As he
has in the past, Putin criticized non-governmental organizations
that he said operated in one country but were paid for by another
with the tacit aim of pushing the latter’s foreign policy
objectives. On Iran, Putin said Russia was “alarmed” by reports of
possible preparations for a military strike to cripple Tehran’s nuclear activities, warning that if such a thing happened “it would have truly catastrophic consequences” on a massive scale.

He
said the world should recognize Iran’s right to develop a civilian
nuclear program, including enrichment of uranium, for energy
production under close supervision of the International Atomic
Energy Agency. In addition to his direct criticism of US behavior on
the world stage, Putin said some policymakers within the United
States – notably in the US Congress – were unable to abandon Cold
War-era stereotypes and phobias about Russia.

Despite
some progress in bilateral Russian-American relations, outdated
perceptions in the United States about Russia – along with what he
called US “political engineering” in regions close to Russia –
still had a negative impact on bilateral relations, he said. Putin
recalled however that in a 2007 meeting with former US president
George W. Bush he had proposed a solution to resolve differences
over missile defense which he said would have dramatically improved
bilateral ties.

Putin
said Russia’s proposals then on missile defense, which would have
paved the way to a “qualitatively new, close and alliance-like model
for cooperation in many other sensitive areas” were still on the
table. “In relations with the US, we would be ready to go really far
and to reach a substantial breakthrough provided the Americans
conduct themselves according to principles of equal and
mutually-respectful partnership,” Putin said.

The
Russian leader acknowledged that his country had had little
success in establishing a more positive image for itself in the
world and insisted that while he would defend his country’s
interests Russia did not want to be isolated. “We are ready to get
to work on mutually-profitable cooperation, toward open dialogue
with all of our foreign partners. We are working to understand and
take account of the interests of our partners. We ask them to
respect ours.”

According
to the Obama Administration, the U.S. is not competing with Russia
for global influence. Unfortunately, Moscow has not received this
memo. Instead, Russia attempts to extend its influence to constrain
U.S. policy. Russian leaders like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
habitually invoke a “polycentric” or multipolar model of the world,
with Russia working with her partners toward a future where U.S. power
is so diminished that it cannot act without Moscow’s permission.

Moscow
has continuously promoted in word and deed the idea that there is or
should be a multipolar world order that constrains U.S. foreign
policies. Moscow’s concept of multipolarity entails an uncontested
sphere of Russian influence in the CIS and with key actors in
critically important regions: Europe, East Asia, the Middle East, and
Latin America.

Anti-American Partnerships

Moscow
has formed partnerships with China, Iran, and Venezuela to prevent
the U.S. from consolidating a regional order under its auspices. Like
the U.S.S.R, its predecessor and inspiration, today’s Russia pursues
key allies in the Middle East and Latin America, such as Syria, Iran,
and Venezuela, with whom it can jointly frustrate American and Western
efforts to consolidate a peaceful regional order. Such partners may
resist U.S. policies and actively counter them to distract the U.S.,
force the U.S. to accommodate Russian interests, or compel an American
retreat.

In East Asia,
Moscow joins China to advocate “a new Asian security order” based on
“mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, and cooperation.”[1]
According to the two great powers, all states would respect each
other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, not criticize their
domestic politics, and support each other on outstanding territorial
issues. To translate:
Beijing, Moscow, and their allies will respect Russia’s claims to the
Kurile Islands (the Northern Territories) and Georgian territories of
Abkhazia/South Ossetia, as well as China’s claims to Xinjiang, Taiwan,
and Tibet; China’s territorial claims against Japan regarding the
Senkaku Islands; and possibly even China’s claims on the Spratly
Islands.

Both countries also
support non-alliance principles, equal and transparent security
frameworks, and equal and indivisible security. Russia also seeks
India’s assent to this formulation and covertly solicits Japan’s
endorsement—even as it humiliates Japan over the Kurile Islands, a sure
sign of Moscow’s endemic desire to play both sides against the middle
and its fundamentally anti-liberal and anti-American orientation. The
proposal’s vagueness benefits only Russia and China and squarely
denounces the U.S. alliance system in Asia. Ultimately, Russia’s
concept of Asian, if not global, multipolarity is self-serving.

Moreover,
the joint proposal resembles Russia’s equally self-serving,
anti-American, and Anti-NATO proposal for a European Security treaty of
2009–2010. Moscow even applies the same rhetoric to this Asian
security proposal that is present in its European Security Treaty
draft. At the International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-La
Dialogue conference in Singapore in 2011, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei
Ivanov said:

Russian–Chinese
proposals are aimed at helping the countries of the region to realize
that security is indivisible and at abandoning attempts to strengthen
one’s security at the expense of others. New regional security
architecture should be based on the universal principles of
international law, non‑aligned approaches, confidence and openness,
with due regard to the diversity of the APR and an emerging polycentric
balance of forces.[2]

The Unsavory Clients: Tehran, Damascus, Caracas

In
addition to diplomatic support for China, Russia has sold Iran,
Syria, and Venezuela large amounts of weapons. Despite the laudable
cancellation of the S-300 air defense missiles sale to Iran, Moscow
still preserves the option of selling other weapons to Tehran. It
signed major energy deals with Tehran in 2010 and this summer has
advocated easing sanctions on Iran provided it cooperates with the
International Atomic Energy Agency—an institution that has long since
demonstrated how easily Iran can deceive it concerning its nuclear
program.

Moscow clearly wants
to retain ties to Iran, which it regards as the rising great power in
the Gulf and Middle East and with whom it wants to collaborate
against any Western effort to consolidate a peaceful order. Moscow has
sold weapons such as anti-tank missiles to Iran and Syria, and these
weapons continue to migrate to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Russia
defends Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime despite its bloody
repression of its own citizens. This is, among other reasons, because
Russia has signed an agreement with Syria to return Soviet naval bases
in Latakiye and Tartus to Russian control. Therefore, Russia obstructs
U.N. resolutions of censure against Syria. French diplomats who
negotiated with Russia believe that Moscow most fears the loss of
another ally in the Middle East. Moscow
has also sold billions in weapons to Hugo Chávez’s regime in
Venezuela, including fighter jets, tanks, and whole Kalashnikov assault
rifle factories. Chávez used his increasing military power to aid the
terrorist group FARC directly and run narcotics from West Africa and
Latin America into Central and North America.

The
notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, who now awaits trial in a New York
federal court, was caught offering to sell weapons to the FARC. Given
Bout’s longstanding connections to senior officials of the Russian
government, Moscow moved heaven and earth to prevent his extradition
from Thailand, where he was arrested, to the U.S. It is quite likely
that Bout’s weapons would have been earmarked for the FARC and/or
similar narco-terrorists throughout Latin America.

Likewise,
Russia has been China’s largest source of foreign weapons since 1990,
even though those sales have declined due to Russian fears about
Chinese intentions and anger over Chinese piracy and subsequent sale of
weapons in competition with Russia in third-party markets.
Nevertheless, arms sales and advanced technology transfers from Russia
to China still occur.

What Should the U.S. Do?

The
optics of Moscow’s ties to anti-American states, which build power to
challenge the U.S. regionally and support and control extensive
terrorist and intelligence networks, clash dramatically with the optics
of the Obama Administration’s “reset.” Tehran, Damascus, and Caracas
have an interest in destabilizing their regions and in acquiring
advanced conventional—and likely nuclear—weapons. Such proliferation
makes for a most problematic multipolarity, which piles up obstacles to
U.S. interests and security.

Despite
the “reset,” it is in U.S. interests to find out to what degree
Moscow orchestrates or participates in joint activities among these
problematic states, including arms sales from Iran and Syria to Hamas
and Hezbollah. Moscow surely knows of the expansion of the Iranian
intelligence, military, economic, and political infrastructure in Iraq,
as well as Iran’s ties to Venezuela and those two states’
collaboration in uranium prospecting. U.S.
policymakers should reassess the “reset” and develop regional
strategies that counter Russia’s (and China’s) agendas. Such policies
should increase pressure on Iran, the most anti-American regional
power, and cause the Assad regime in Syria and the Chávez government in
Venezuela to stop supporting terrorism.

The Trying Times Ahead

A
“reset” policy that ignores Russia’s global efforts to undermine the
U.S. recalls the ill-fated détente of the 1970s. It ran aground on
Russian expansionism and wars in the Third World, especially
Afghanistan. Despite profound changes since then, Russia’s basic
anti-American strategic orientation, “reset” rhetoric aside, seems to be
the same. In the trying times ahead, when it comes to global
challenges, the U.S. should relearn and practice international
balance-of-power politics.

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.,
is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and
International Energy Policy in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for
Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom
Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.Stephen J. Blank, Ph.D., is Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army War College.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R–OH) recently delivered a blistering critique
of President Obama’s Russia “reset” strategy. “Over the last two
and a half years,” he said, Russia “has been the beneficiary of
American outreach and engagement. [Yet it] has continued to expand
its physical, political, and economic presence…under the guise
of…a ‘sphere of influence.’ “Within Russia, control is the order
of the day, with key industries nationalized, the independent
media repressed, and the loyal opposition beaten and jailed.
Russia uses natural resources as a political weapon. And it plays
ball with unstable and dangerous regimes.”

Why hasn’t the “reset” produced better results? After all, President Obama canceled key missile defenses
in Europe after Russia complained, so you’d expect more than
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s dismissive remark that those
measures simply “corrected mistakes
that the Bush Administration made.” The problem is that Obama
expected more from the Russians than they are willing to give under
any circumstance. They have their reasons for rejecting Obama’s
overtures, yet the Administration continues to project its
mistaken hopes and expectations on them regardless of the
outcomes.

The reset
policy fails because it is based on flawed premises. For one
thing, it assumes that Russia’s leaders share our interests. But
Vladimir Putin, the self-proclaimed “National Leader” of Russia, looks
at the world very differently than we do. Putin’s main goal is
to maximize the financial benefits for his party and friends. He
sits on a vast natural resource and financial empire and, through
his close associates, controls major oil companies, some of which
devoured formerly publicly held and more transparent
corporations like YUKOS. Putin’s network also controls a large
part of the oil trade, including giants Gazprom and Transneft,
ports, and pipelines.

Putin’s
political power is the guarantor of this empire. He knows he and
his friends could lose their wealth along with the ability to
protect it from political enemies if he falls from power. Russian
foreign policy has been crafted around this interest. It meant
securing transit of Russian gas to Europe through Ukraine and
Belarus, hiring former German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder to
assure smooth construction of the Nordstream pipeline, playing
Armenia against Azerbaijan to ensure control over energy transit
from the Caspian, and changing the rules of the political and
legal systems so investigations of wrongdoing never take place.

It
is a thoroughly cynical view of the world. Putin and President
Dmitry Medvedev feel no need to reciprocate Obama’s reset gestures
because they are beside the point. If your primary motive is to
amass hundreds of billions of dollars and protect it indefinitely,
then appeals for your cooperation on larger purposes fall on
deaf ears.

There is
another huge difference with the American worldview: Putin and his
friends have a zero-sum view of international relations. Everyone
else’s gain—particularly America’s—is potentially Russia’s loss.
That’s why the Russians embrace negotiations with the U.S. that
assume a potential conflict, like over nuclear arms control.
Potential conflict gives them leverage to extract concessions,
particularly if Washington fears bad relations more than Russia and
if the U.S. thinks Russia keeps nuclear weapons only because
America does. Sure, Russia masterfully plays the international
diplomatic game at the United Nations and elsewhere, but this is
mainly a public relations strategy to defuse international
opposition.

At the
end of the day, Russia looks around the world and sees enemies,
potential rivals, and clients. That’s why it mistreats neighbors and
why so many of them distrust it. That’s why it desperately needs
America to pay homage to it with concessions in arms control
negotiations and cancelled missile defense programs. Its attitude
toward the U.S. belies a calculated set of self-interested moves
to gain financial and geopolitical advantage over other nations.
All of this is a curious game of mirror-imaging. Obama and his team
look at Russia and see themselves—a more or less responsible
government, perhaps not ideally democratic but still sensible and
responsive to normal overtures of cooperation.

Putin
looks and sees an America seemingly the same but actually the
reverse of his reality. He knows Russia is not like America
(Russia’s $2 trillion in GDP cannot compete with America’s $14
trillion), yet he insists that Russia be treated with equal
respect. The pretense is that Russia is as morally deserving of
respect as America is; in reality, it is respected only because
of its size, energy resources, and nuclear weapons. In other
words, it is “respected” because of what it can provide or
threaten, not what it is—and it is not a trusted democracy like America.

This
produces a very odd psychology, one that goes to the heart of
why the reset policy is failing. No amount of appeasing,
pandering, or friendship can force Putin and his regime to give
up this essentially conflict-oriented policy. Tension with the
U.S. gives Putin self-respect and shows enemies within and rivals
abroad that he must be taken seriously. Russia cooperates in
areas that suit its self-interest, but it always asks for
something big in return. Surely it is in Russia’s interest that
Iran not acquire a nuclear weapon or that the Taliban not prevail
in Afghanistan. Yet the price for its support is concessions such as on New START.
The game it plays is mainly about power and near-term financial
gain, not international peace and stability and certainly not
about freedom or democracy.

There
is an underappreciated continuity between Russia’s domestic
state and its foreign policy toward the West. Former chess grand
champion and Russian democrat Garry Kasparov
says Putin’s regime is more like a mafia organization than the
state of the former Soviet Union. Putin, he argues, is “very good
in creating the psychological playground where he could outwit
Western leaders.” He knows he can’t resort to Stalin-type
repression, Kasparov observes, because, “unlike Stalin, he and his
cronies—they keep money in the West.”

This
is a harsh appraisal, to be sure. But there is a larger point:
U.S. policymakers should understand that Putin and his friends
operate under different rules. Overlooking this fact is why their
“reset” policy is in trouble.

Geopolitical Tensions and the Multipolar System: The US versus Eurasia

The
transition from the unipolar system to a multipolar one is
generating tensions in two particular areas of the Eurasian landmass:
the Mediterranean and Central Asia. The process of consolidation
of polycentrism seems to be undergoing an impasse caused by the
“regionalist” behavior adopted by the Eurasian powers. The
identification of a single great Mediterranean-Central Asian space,
functioning as the hinge of the Euro-Afro-Asian landmass, could
provide operational elements for Eurasian integration.

In
the process of transition between the unipolar moment and the new
polycentric system geopolitical tensions are observed that are
discharging principally in areas of high strategic value. Among
these, the Mediterranean basin and Central Asia, real hinges in
the Euro-Afro-Asian structure, have, since 1 March 2003, taken on a
particular interest in the setting of geopolitical analysis
regarding relations between the US, the main Eurasian nations and
the countries of North Africa. Remember that on that date, the
parliament of Turkey, that nation-bridge parexcellence between the Central Asian republics and the Mediterranean, decided to deny the support requested by the US for the war in Iraq1.

This
fact, far from being merely a negotiating point between
Washington and Ankara, as it might have seemed at first (and
certainly it was also this, because of two opposing elements:
Turkish loyalty to its North American ally and the worry in Ankara
for the effect of the hypothetical creation of a Kurdistan, which
at the then-expected plan to divide Iraq into three parts, would
have led to an unresolved “Kurdish question”), nonetheless
established the beginning of an reversal of the 50-year trend in
Turkish foreign policy2.

Since then, with
continuous growth until today, Turkey, particularly through its
closeness to Russia (aided by the lack of propensity in the European
Union to admit Ankara) and the new good neighbor policies, has
tried to practice a sort of “escape” from US protection,
effectively making it an unreliable base for North American
penetration into the Eurasian landmass. Besides the obstacles
represented by Iran and Syria, Washington and Pentagon strategists now
have to keep the new and little-malleable Turkey in mind.The
change in Turkey’s conduct came in the context of a more general
and complex transformation of the Eurasian scenario, characterized
by notable elements such as the reaffirmation of Russia on the
continental and global scale, the strong geo-economic and financial
emergence of China and India, and the deterioration of US military
power in Afghanistan and Iraq.
From the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet downfall
there seemed to be an unstoppable advance of the “Necessary
Nation” toward the center of the Eurasian continent, following the
two following predetermined lines of march:

-
first, proceeding from continental Europe, aimed, through coups
of “colorful revolution”, at the inclusion in its own sphere of
influence of the neighboring ex-Soviet states, quickly dubbed the “New
Europe” by Rumsfeld’s definition, and strategically destined, in
time, to press against a Russia reaching the end of its strength;

-
second, made up of a long road from the Mediterranean extending
toward the new Central Asian republics, aimed at cutting in two the
Euro-Afro-Asian landmass and creating a permanent geopolitical
vulnus in the heart of Eurasia;

This was all stopped in just a few years of the Afghan morass.The
last few attempts at “colorful revolution” have failed and the
agitation controlled by Washington in the Caucasus and in the
Central Asian republics, respectively because of Moscow’s
determination and by the joint Eurasian policies of China and Russia,
put into action through, among others, the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO), the Eurasian Economic Community and the
consolidation of friendly relations and military cooperation. At
the end of the first decade of the new century the US had to
reformulate its Eurasian strategies.The usual Atlantic Hegemony ProcedureThe
assumption of the Western system geopolitical paradigm as led by the
US, laid out in the dichotomy of the US versus Eurasia and in the
concept of “strategic danger”3, leads the analysts
practicing it to favor the critical aspects of the different Atlantic
target areas. Such aspects are commonly made up of endogenous
tensions due in particular to interethnic problems, social
imbalances, lack of religious and cultural homogeneity4 and geopolitical friction.

The
ready solutions regard actions ranging from the role of the US
and its allies in the “reconstruction” of “failed states” in
different ways (all in any case aimed at spreading the “Western
values” of democracy and free enterprise, without taking into
account at all the local cultural peculiarities and traditions), to
direct military intervention. This is often justified, according
to the situation, as a necessary response to defend US interests
and the so-called international order, or in the specific case of
states or governments that the West already and significantly
considers, according to the rule of soft power, “rogue,” needing an extreme remedy to defend its people and safeguard human rights5.Considering
that the US’s geopolitical perspective is typically that of a sea
power, interpreting its relationship with other nations or
geopolitical entities from its situation as an “island”6,
it identifies the Mediterranean basin and the Central Asian area
as two zones characterized by strong instability. The two areas
are located in the so-called arc of instability as defined by
Zbigniew Brzezinski. The arc of instability or of crisis
constitutes, as noted, an evolution and expansion of the
geostrategic concept of rimland (maritme and coastal margin)
developed by Nicholas J. Spykman7.

Control
of the rimland would have permitted, in the context of the
bipolar system, control of the Eurasian landmass and so the
containment of its main nation, the Soviet Union, for the
exclusive benefit of the “North American island”.In
the new unipolar context, the US-defined geopolitical area of the
Great Middle East runs in a wide band from Morocco through Central
Asia, a band that, according to Washington, needed to be
“pacified” because it represented an ample arc of crisis, with
conflicts generated by the lack of homogeneity as mentioned above.
Such a view spread by Samuel Huntington’s research and Zigbniew
Brzezinski’s analysis, fully explains the practice followed by the US
in order to open a passage in the Eurasian continental landmass
and from there press on the Russian space to assume world
domination. Nevertheless some “unexpected” factors such as the
“recovery” of Russia, the Eurasian policies practiced by Putin in
Central Asia, new agreements between Moscow and Peking, as well as
the emergence of the new Turkey (factors that recalling the
relative and contemporary “emancipations” of some South American
countries delineate a multipolar or poly-centric system) have
influenced the redefinition of the area as a New Middle East. Such
evolution, emblematically, was made official in the course of the
Israeli-Lebanese war of 2006. The then-Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said:

«
I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon
and Israel to the status quo ante. I think it would be a mistake.
What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth
pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain
that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back
to the old one. »8.

The new definition was, obviously, pragmatic; in fact it aimed at the reaffirmation of the strategic partnership withTel
Aviv and the crushing – weakening of the near and mid-east area
that few days after Condoleezza Rice’s declaration was specified by
Israeli Prime Minister Olmert to be the “New Order” in the
“Middle East”. Similarly programmatic was Brzezinski coining of
“Eurasian Balkans”, referring to the Central Asian area, seeing
its use to the formulation of a geostrategic practice that,
through the destabilization based on endogenous tensionsof Central Asia, it had (and has) the aim of making the possible geopolitical union betweenChina and Russia problematic.

In
the years between 2006 up to the “Odyssey Dawn” operation
against Lybia (2011), the US, notwithstanding the rhetoric
initiated from 2009 with the new occupant of the White House, has
in fact followed a strategy aimed at the militarization of the
entire swath made up of the Mediterranean and Central Asia. In
particular, in 2008 the US put military device in the field for
Africa, Africom, currently (March 2011) involved in the Libyan
“crisis”, intended to root the American presence in Africa in
terms of control and rapid intervention in the African continent,
but also directed toward the “new” Middle East and Central Asia.
Briefly, the US strategy consists of militarization of the
Mediterranean-Central Asian arch. Its principle aims are:

a)To create a wedge between southern Europe and northern Africa;

b)To
assure Washington’s military control over northern Africa and the
Near East (including using the Camp Bondsteel base in Kosovo i
Metohija), with particular attention in the area of Turkey, Syria
and Iran;

c)To “cut” in two the Eurasian landmass;

d)To enlarge the so-called arc of crisis in Central Asia

In
the setting of the first and second objectives, Washington’s
interests are turned mainly toward Italy and Turkey. The two
Mediterranean countries, for different reasons (notably of energy and
industrial policy for Italy and more strictly geopolitical for
Ankara, wishing to take on a regional role of the first level,
moreover in direct competition with Israel) have in recent years
woven international relationships that, in perspective, since
relations with Moscow are strong, could have (and can) be useful
levers for a potential Turkish-Italian exit strategy from the North
American sphere of influence. The objective attempt by Rome and
Ankara to increase their own degrees of liberty in the international
contest collided not only with the general geopolitical interests
of Washington and London but also with the more “provincial” ones
of Sarkozy’s Union méditerranéenne.Multipolarism between Regionalist and Eurasian PerspectivesThe
practice applied by the Western system, led by the US and
intended, as described above, to amplify the crises in Eurasia and
in the Mediterranean is not aimed at their stabilization. On the
contrary, such a procedure is devoted to maintain its own hegemony,
through militarization of international relationships and
involvement of local actors. Moreover, this kind of geopolitical
“road map” is aimed at identifying other future probable targets
(Iran, Syria, Turkey) useful for the United State of America’s
foothold in Eurasia, laying out some reflections regarding the
“health” of the US and the structuring of the multipolar system.In
a less superficial analysis, the aggression toward Libya by the
US, Great Britain and France, is not at all a sporadic case but a
symptom of Washington’s difficulty in working diplomatically and
with the sense of responsibility that a global actor should have.
This is shown by the rapacious nature typical of a declining power.
The American political scientist and economist David. P. Calleo,
critic of “unipolar folly” and scholar of the decline of the US,
noted in long-ago 1987 that, generally, powers in the process of
decline, rather than regulate and adapt themselves, seek to cement
its staggering dominance by transforming it in rapacious hegemony10.

Luca Lauriola in Scacco matto all’America e a Israele. Fine dell’ultimo Impero11,
(Checkmate for the US and Israel. The end of the last empire)
believes, reasonably, that the Eurasian powers Russia, China and
India handle the overseas power (i.e. USA), by now “lost and
crazed”, in a way to not provoke reactions that could lead to
planetary catastrophes.Regarding
the structuring of the multipolar system, it must be noted that
this advances slowly, not because of recent US actions in North
Africa, but rather because of the “regionalist” attitude adopted by
the Eurasian actors (Turkey, Russia and China) who, in evaluating
the Mediterranean and Central Asia as a function of their own
national interests, fail to gather the geostrategic significance
that these areas perform in the larger scenario of conflict between
far-flung (US) and Eurasian geopolitical interests. The
rediscovery of a sole great Mediterranean-Central Asian space,
highlighting the role of “hinge” that this takes on in the
Euro-Afro-Asian subdivision, could provide operating elements to
overcome the “regionalist” impasse that the unipolar-multipolar
transition process is undergoing.

On
November 19 and 20, NATO leaders meet in Lisbon for what is
billed as a summit on “NATO’s Strategic Concept”. Among topics
of discussion will be an array of scary “threats”, from cyberwar
to climate change, as well as nice protective things like nuclear
weapons and a high tech Maginot Line boondoggle supposed to stop
enemy missiles in mid-air. The NATO leaders will be unable to
avoid talking about the war in Afghanistan, that endless crusade
that unites the civilized world against the elusive Old Man of
the Mountain, Hassan i Sabah, eleventh century chief of the
Assassins in his latest reincarnation as Osama bin Laden. There
will no doubt be much talk of “our shared values”.

Most
of what they will discuss is fiction with a price tag. The one
thing missing from the Strategic Concept summit agenda is a serious
discussion of strategy. This is partly because NATO as such has no
strategy, and cannot have its own strategy. NATO is in reality
an instrument of United States strategy. Its only operative
Strategic Concept is the one put into practice by the United
States. But even that is an elusive phantom. American leaders
seem to prefer striking postures, “showing resolve”, to defining
strategies.One
who does presume to define strategy is Zbigniew Brzezinski,
godfather of the Afghan Mujahidin back when they could be used to
destroy the Soviet Union. Brzezinski was not shy about bluntly
stating the strategic objective of U.S. policy in his 1993 book The
Grand Chessboard: “American primacy”. As for NATO, he described it
as one of the institutions serving to perpetuate American
hegemony, “making the United States a key participant even in
intra-European affairs.” In its “global web of specialized
institutions”, which of course includes NATO, the United States
exercises power through “continuous bargaining, dialogue,
diffusion, and quest for formal consensus, even though that power
originates ultimately from a single source, namely, Washington,
D.C.”The
description perfectly fits the Lisbon “Strategic Concept”
conference. Last week, NATO’s Danish secretary general, Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, announced that “we are pretty close to a consensus”.
And this consensus, according to the New York Times, “will
probably follow President Barack Obama’s own formulation: to work
toward a non-nuclear world while maintaining a nuclear
deterrent”. Wait a minute, does that make sense? No, but it is
the stuff of NATO consensus. Peace through war, nuclear
disarmament through nuclear armament, and above all, defense of
member states by sending expeditionary forces to infuriate the
natives of distant lands. A strategy is not a consensus written by
committees.The
American method of “continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion,
and quest for formal consensus” wears down whatever resistance may
occasionally appear. Thus Germany and France initially resisted
Georgian membership in NATO, as well as the notorious “missile
shield”, both seen as blatant provocations apt to set off a new
arms race with Russia and damage fruitful German and French
relations with Moscow, for no useful purpose. But the United
States does not take no for an answer, and keeps repeating its
imperatives until resistance fades. The one recent exception was
the French refusal to join the invasion of Iraq, but the angry
U.S. reaction scared the conservative French political class into
supporting the pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy.In search of “threats” and “challenges”The
very heart of what passes for a “strategic concept” was first
declared and put into operation in the spring of 1999, when NATO
defied international law, the United Nations and its own original
charter by waging an aggressive war outside its defensive
perimeter against Yugoslavia. That transformed NATO from a
defensive to an offensive alliance. Ten years later, the godmother
of that war, Madeleine Albright, was picked to chair the “group
of experts” that spent several months holding seminars,
consultations and meetings preparing the Lisbon agenda. Prominent
in these gatherings were Lord Peter Levene, chairman of Lloyd’s
of London, the insurance giant, and the former chief executive of
Royal Dutch Shell, Jeroen van der Veer. These ruling class
figures are not exactly military strategists, but their
participation should reassure the international business community
that their worldwide interests are being taken into consideration.Indeed,
a catalogue of threats enumerated by Rasmussen in a speech last
year seemed to suggest that NATO was working for the insurance
industry. NATO, he said, was needed to deal with piracy, cyber
security, climate change, extreme weather events such as catastrophic
storms and flooding, rising sea levels, large-scale population
movement into inhabited areas, sometimes across borders, water
shortages, droughts, decreasing food production, global warming, CO2
emissions, the retreat of Arctic ice uncovering hitherto
inaccessible resources, fuel efficiency and dependence on foreign
sources, etc.Most
of the enumerated threats cannot even remotely be construed as
calling for military solutions. Surely no "rogue states" or
"outposts of tyranny" or "international terrorists" are
responsible for climate change, yet Rasmussen presents them as
challenges to NATO. On the other hand, some of the results of
these scenarios, such as population movements caused by rising
sea levels or drought, can indeed be seen as potentially causing
crises. The ominous aspect of the enumeration is precisely that
all such problems are eagerly snatched up by NATO as requiring
military solutions. The main threat to NATO is its own
obsolescence. And the search for a “strategic concept” is the
search for pretexts to keep it going.NATO’s Threat to the WorldWhile
it searches for threats, NATO itself is a growing threat to the
world. The basic threat is its contribution to strengthening the
U.S.-led tendency to abandon diplomacy and negotiations in favor
of military force. This is seen clearly in Rasmussen’s inclusion
of weather phenomena in his list of threats to NATO, when they
should, instead, be problems for international diplomacy and
negotiations. The growing danger is that Western diplomacy is
dying. The United States has set the tone: we are virtuous, we
have the power, the rest of the world must obey or else.Diplomacy
is despised as weakness. The State Department has long since
ceased to be at the core of U.S. foreign policy. With its vast
network of military bases the world over, as well as military
attachés in embassies and countless missions to client countries,
the Pentagon is incomparably more powerful and influential in the
world than the State Department.Recent
Secretaries of State, far from seeking diplomatic alternatives
to war, have actually played a leading role in advocating war
instead of diplomacy, whether Madeleine Albright in the Balkans
or Colin Powell waving fake test tubes in the United Nations
Security Council. Policy is defined by the National Security
Advisor, various privately-funded think tanks and the Pentagon,
with interference from a Congress which itself is composed of
politicians eager to obtain military contracts for their
constituencies.NATO
is dragging Washington’s European allies down the same path.
Just as the Pentagon has replaced the State Department, NATO
itself is being used by the United States as a potential
substitute for the United Nations. The 1999 “Kosovo war” was a
first major step in that direction. Sarkozy’s France, after
rejoining the NATO joint command, is gutting the traditionally
skilled French foreign service, cutting back on civilian
representation throughout the world. The European Union foreign
service now being created by Lady Ashton will have no policy and
no authority of its own.Bureaucratic InertiaBehind
its appeals to “common values”, NATO is driven above all by
bureaucratic inertia. The alliance itself is an excrescence of the
U.S. military-industrial complex. For sixty years, military
procurements and Pentagon contracts have been an essential source of
industrial research, profits, jobs, Congressional careers, even
university funding. The interplay of these varied interests
converge to determine an implicit U.S. strategy of world
conquest.An
ever-expanding global network of somewhere between 800 and a
thousand military bases on foreign soil. Bilateral military accords
with client states which offer training while obliging them to
purchase U.S.-made weapons and redesign their armed forces away
from national defense toward internal security (i.e. repression) and
possible integration into U.S.-led wars of aggression. Use of
these close relationships with local armed forces to influence the
domestic politics of weaker states. Perpetual military exercises
with client states, which provide the Pentagon with perfect
knowledge of the military potential of client states, integrate
them into the U.S. military machine, and sustain a “ready for war”
mentality.Deployment
of its network of bases, “allies” and military exercises so as
to surround, isolate, intimidate and eventually provoke major
nations perceived as potential rivals, notably Russia and China.
The implicit strategy of the United States, as perceived by its
actions, is a gradual military conquest to ensure world domination.
One original feature of this world conquest project is that,
although extremely active, day after day, it is virtually ignored
by the vast majority of the population of the conquering nation, as
well as by its most closely dominated allies, i.e., the NATO
states.The
endless propaganda about “terrorist threats” (the fleas on the
elephant) and other diversions keep most Americans totally unaware of
what is going on, all the more easily in that Americans are
almost uniquely ignorant of the rest of the world and thus
totally uninterested. The U.S. may bomb a country off the map
before more than a small fraction of Americans know where to find
it. The main task of U.S. strategists, whose careers take them
between think tanks, boards of directors, consultancy firms and
the government, is to justify this giant mechanism much more than
to steer it. To a large extent, it steers itself.Since
the collapse of the “Soviet threat”, policy-makers have settled
for invisible or potential threats. U.S. military doctrine has as
its aim to move preventively against any potential rival to U.S.
world hegemony. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia
retains the largest arsenal outside the United States, and China
is a rapidly rising economic power. Neither one threatens the
United States or Western Europe. On the contrary, both are ready
and willing to concentrate on peaceful business.However,
they are increasingly alarmed by the military encirclement and
provocative military exercises carried on by the United States on
their very doorsteps. The implicit aggressive strategy may be
obscure to most Americans, but leaders in the targeted countries
are quite certain they understand what it is going on.The Russia-Iran-Israel TriangleCurrently,
the main explicit “enemy” is Iran. Washington claims that the
“missile shield” which it is forcing on its European allies is
designed to defend the West from Iran. But the Russians see quite
clearly that the missile shield is aimed at themselves. First of
all, they understand quite clearly that Iran has no such missiles
nor any possible motive for using them against the West. It is
perfectly obvious to all informed analysts that even if Iran
developed nuclear weapons and missiles, they would be conceived as
a deterrent against Israel, the regional nuclear superpower which
enjoys a free hand attacking neighboring countries. Israel does
not want to lose that freedom to attack, and thus naturally
opposes the Iranian deterrent.Israeli propagandists scream loudly about the threat from Iran, and have worked incessantly to infect NATO with their paranoia.Israel
has even been described as “Global NATO’s 29th member”. Israeli
officials have assiduously worked on a receptive Madeleine
Albright to make sure that Israeli interests are included in the
“Strategic Concept”. During the past five years, Israel and NATO
have been taking part in joint naval exercises in the Red Sea
and in the Mediterranean, as well as joint ground exercises from
Brussels to Ukraine. On October 16, 2006, Israel became the first
non-European country to reach a so-called “Individual
Cooperation Program” agreement with NATO for cooperation in 27
different areas.It
is worth noting that Israel is the only country outside Europe
which the U.S. includes in the area of responsibility of its
European Command (rather than the Central Command that covers the
rest of the Middle East). At a NATO-Israel Relations seminar in
Herzliya on October 24, 2006, the Israeli foreign minister at the
time, Tzipi Livni, declared that "The alliance between NATO and
Israel is only natural....Israel and NATO share a common strategic
vision. In many ways, Israel is the front line defending our
common way of life." Not everybody in European countries would
consider that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine reflect
“our common way of life”.This
is no doubt one reason why the deepening union between NATO and
Israel has not taken the open form of NATO membership. Especially
after the savage attack on Gaza, such a move would arouse
objections in European countries. Nevertheless, Israel continues
to invite itself into NATO, ardently supported, of course, by its
faithful followers in the U.S. Congress. The principal cause of
this growing Israel-NATO symbiosis has been identified by
Mearsheimer and Walt: the vigorous and powerful pro-Israel lobby
in the United States.Israeli
lobbies are also strong in France, Britain and the UK. They have
zealously developed the theme of Israel as the “front line” in
the defense of “Western values” against militant Islam. The fact
that militant Islam is largely a product of that “front line”
creates a perfect vicious circle. Israel’s aggressive stance
toward its regional neighbors would be a serious liability for
NATO, apt to be dragged into wars of Israel’s choosing which are
by no means in the interest of Europe. However, there is one
subtle strategic advantage in the Israeli connection which the
United States seems to be using… against Russia.By
subscribing to the hysterical “Iranian threat” theory, the United
States can continue to claim with a straight face that the
planned missile shield is directed against Iran, not Russia. This
cannot be expected to convince the Russians. But it can be used
to make their protests sound “paranoid” – at least to the ears of
the Western faithful. Dear me, what can they be complaining about
when we “reset” our relations with Moscow and invite the Russian
president to our “Strategic Concept” happy gathering?However,
the Russians know quite well that: The missile shield is to be
constructed surrounding Russia, which does have missiles, which it
keeps for deterrence. By neutralizing Russian missiles, the United
States would free its own hand to attack Russia, knowing that the
Russia could not retaliate. Therefore, whatever is said, the missile
shield, if it worked, would serve to facilitate eventual
aggression against Russia.Encircling RussiaThe
encirclement of Russia continues in the Black Sea, the Baltic and
the Arctic circle. United States officials continue to claim that
Ukraine must join NATO. Just this week, in a New York Times column,
Zbigniew’s son Ian J. Brzezinski advised Obama against
abandoning the “vision” of a “whole, free and secure” Europe
including “eventual Georgian and Ukrainian membership in NATO and
the European Union.” The fact that the vast majority of the
people of Ukraine are against NATO membership is of no account.
For the current scion of the noble Brzezinski dynasty it is the
minority that counts. Abandoning the vision “undercuts those in
Georgia and Ukraine who see their future in Europe. It reinforces
Kremlin aspirations for a sphere of influence…”The
notion that “the Kremlin” aspires to a “sphere of influence” in
Ukraine is absurd considering the extremely close historic links
between Russia and Ukraine, whose capital Kiev was the cradle of
the Russian state. But the Brzezinski family hailed from Galicia,
the part of Western Ukraine which once belonged to Poland, and
which is the center of the anti-Russian minority. U.S. foreign
policy is all too frequently influenced by such foreign rivalries
of which the vast majority of Americans are totally ignorant.Relentless
U.S. insistence on absorbing Ukraine continues despite the fact
that it would imply expelling the Russian Black Sea fleet from its
base in the Crimean peninsula, where the local population is
overwhelmingly Russian-speaking and pro-Russian. This is a recipe
for war with Russia if ever there was one. And meanwhile, U.S.
officials continue to declare their support for Georgia, whose
American-trained president openly hopes to bring NATO support into
his next war against Russia.Aside
from provocative naval maneuvers in the Black Sea, the United
States, NATO and (as yet) non-NATO members Sweden and Finland
regularly carry out major military exercises in the Baltic Sea,
virtually in sight of the Russia cities of Saint Petersburg and
Kaliningrad. These exercises involve thousands of ground troops,
hundreds of aircraft including F-15 jet fighters, AWACS, as well as
naval forces including the U.S. Carrier Strike Group 12, landing
craft and warships from a dozen countries.Perhaps
most ominous of all, in the Arctic region, the United States has
been persistently engaging Canada and the Scandinavian states
(including Denmark via Greenland) in a military deployment openly
directed against Russia. The point of these Arctic deployment was
stated by Fogh Rasmussen when he mentioned, among “threats” to be
met by NATO, the fact that “Arctic ice is retreating, for
resources that had, until now, been covered under ice.”Now,
one might consider that this uncovering of resources would be an
opportunity for cooperation in exploiting them. But that is not
the official U.S. mindset. Last October, US Admiral James G
Stavridis, supreme Nato commander for Europe, said global warming
and a race for resources could lead to a conflict in the Arctic.
Coast Guard Rear Admiral Christopher C. Colvin, in charge of
Alaska’s coastline, said Russian shipping activity in the Arctic
Ocean was “of particular concern” for the US and called for more
military facilities in the region.The
US Geological Service believes that the Arctic contains up to a
quarter of the world’s unexplored deposits of oil and gas. Under
the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, a coastal
state is entitled to a 200-nautical mile EEZ and can claim a
further 150 miles if it proves that the seabed is a continuation of
its continental shelf. Russia is applying to make this claim.
After pushing for the rest of the world to adopt the Convention,
the United States Senate has still not ratified the Treaty. In
January 2009, NATO declared the “High North” to be “of strategic
interest to the Alliance,” and since then, NATO has held several
major war games clearly preparing for eventual conflict with
Russia over Arctic resources.Russia
largely dismantled its defenses in the Arctic after the collapse
of the Soviet Union, and has called for negotiating compromises
over resource control. Last September, Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin called for joint efforts to protect the fragile ecosystem,
attract foreign investment, promote environmentally friendly
technologies and work to resolve disputes through international
law. But the United States, as usual, prefers to settle the issue
by throwing its weight around. This could lead to a new arms race
in the Arctic, and even to armed clashes.Despite
all these provocative moves, it is most unlikely that the United
States actually seeks war with Russia, although skirmishes and
incidents here and there cannot be ruled out. The U.S. policy
appears to be to encircle and intimidate Russia to such an extent
that it accepts a semi-satellite status that neutralizes it in
the anticipated future conflict with China.Target ChinaThe
only reason to target China is like the proverbial reason to
climb the mountain: it is there. It is big. And the US must be on
top of everything. The strategy for dominating China is the same
as for Russia. It is classic warfare: encirclement, siege, more
or less clandestine support for internal disorder. As examples of
this strategy: The United States is provocatively strengthening
its military presence along the Pacific shores of China, offering
“protection against China” to East Asian countries.During
the Cold War, when India got its armaments from the Soviet Union
and struck a non-aligned posture, the United States armed
Pakistan as its main regional ally. Now the U.S. is shifting its
favors to India, in order to keep India out of the orbit of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization and to build it as a
counterweight to China. The United States and its allies support
any internal dissidence that might weaken China, whether it is the
Dalai Lama, the Uighurs, or Liu Xiaobo, the jailed dissident.The
Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed on Liu Xiaobo by a committee of
Norwegian legislators headed by Thorbjorn Jagland, Norway’s echo of
Tony Blair, who has served as Norway’s prime minister and
foreign minister, and has been one of his country’s main
cheerleaders for NATO.At
a NATO-sponsored conference of European parliamentarians last
year, Jagland declared: “When we are not able to stop tyranny,
war starts. This is why NATO is indispensable. NATO is the only
multilateral military organization rooted in international law.
It is an organization that the U.N. can use when necessary — to
stop tyranny, like we did in the Balkans.” This is an
astoundingly bold misstatement of fact, considering that NATO
openly defied international law and the United Nations to make
war in the Balkans – where in reality there was ethnic conflict,
but no “tyranny”.In
announcing the choice of Liu, the Norwegian Nobel committee,
headed by Jagland, declared that it “has long believed that there
is a close connection between human rights and peace." The “close
connection”, to follow the logic of Jagland’s own statements, is
that if a foreign state fails to respect human rights according
to Western interpretations, it may be bombed, as NATO bombed
Yugoslavia. Indeed, the very powers that make the most noise about
“human rights”, notably the United States and Britain, are the ones
making the most wars all over the world. The Norwegian’s
statements make it clear that granting the Nobel Peace Prize to
Liu (who in his youth spent time in Norway) amounted in reality
to an endorsement of NATO.“Democracies” to replace the United NationsThe
European members of NATO add relatively little to the military
power of the United States. Their contribution is above all
political. Their presence maintains the illusion of an
“International Community”. The world conquest being pursued by the
bureaucratic inertia of the Pentagon can be presented as the
crusade by the world’s “democracies” to spread their enlightened
political order to the rest of a recalcitrant world.The
Euro-Atlantic governments proclaim their “democracy” as proof of
their absolute right to intervene in the affairs of the rest of
the world. On the basis of the fallacy that “human rights are
necessary for peace”, they proclaim their right to make war. A
crucial question is whether “Western democracy” still has the
strength to dismantle this war machine before it is too late.Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21999

The US-NATO March to War and the 21st Century "Great Game"

The Caucasus, the Balkans, the Middle East, East Africa, Central Asia

The
following text is PART II of The "Great Game" and the Conquest of
Eurasia. The first text gave an overview of the global
counter-alliance forming against the U.S. and NATO. In this second
portion, the various fronts of the global rivalry between these two
sides will be examined.

The Multiple Fronts of the 21st Century “Great Game”The
globe is gripped with a series of arenas where the struggle
between the U.S. and its allies against the triple entente of
Eurasia — Russia, China, and Iran — and their other allies are
taking place. The struggles in these fronts vary in shape and
dimension, but are all inter-linked and aimed against incorporation
into a central entity controlled by the U.S. and its allies.
These fronts are the Caucasus, the Balkans, East Africa, the
Middle East (including the Eastern Mediterranean), the Indian
Ocean, Central Asia, South Asia or the Indian sub-continent,
Southeast Asia, East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the
Arctic Circle.Eastern
Europe, the South China Sea, Korea, Central Asia, and the Middle
East have been abuzz with military operations and war games by all
sides. China, Russia, and Iran are all developing new weapons and
asymmetrical war tactics, including expanded space projects and
aircraft carriers. In occupied Iraq, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan,
and Israeli-occupied Palestine the non-state resistance movements
continue their battles for national liberation with the support of
the governments of Eurasia in some cases.Russia’s
strategic bombers have resumed their Cold War practice of flying
long-distance missions to territories patrolled by the U.S. and
NATO. [6] Russia and Belarus have armed their joint air defence
systems in Eastern Europe in response to the missile threat from
the U.S. and NATO in Europe. Both Belarus and Russia have also been
making preparations, through military drills called “West 2009,”
for a naval, land, and air assault against them by NATO that
simulates a NATO invasion from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and
Estonia. [7]Myanmar
(Burma), China’s ally, is also constructing a port and naval
facilities to allow Beijing to secure its energy lifeline in the
Indian Ocean by circumventing the Straits of Malacca and the
Straits of Taiwan, which are guarded by the naval forces of the
U.S. and its allies. To further secure the Indian Ocean for the
Eurasians, Sri Lanka (Ceylon) has also become an associate member
of the SCO through becoming a dialogue partner. [8] It is in this
framework that Russia, China, and Iran supported the Sri Lankan
government against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or
simply Tamil Tigers, during the Sri Lankan Civil WarNorth
Korea has been priming itself for a possible war with the U.S.,
South Korea, and Japan. Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and
Cuba have prepared themselves for what they call wars of
resistance through political, economic, and armed preparations.
Likewise, Syria and Lebanon with the support of Iran have prepared
themselves for an anticipated conflict with Israel. Oil-rich
Sudan has also been bracing itself for internal strife and for the
possibility of a future conflict, led by the U.S. and based on
the pretext of “humanitarian intervention.” The Caucasus Front: Russo-Georgian Tensions and War PreparationsCaucasia
or the Caucasus is the region between the Black Sea and the
Caspian Sea that straddles the Caucasus Mountains. Like the Ural
Mountains, the Caucasus forms the dividing borders of the
politically defined continents of Europe and Asia. The Caucasus
region itself, which can also be considered an extension of the
Middle East, is divided into two sub-regions. These two sub-regions
are the North Caucasus, which exclusively includes the Caucasian
constituent republics of the Russian Federation, and the South
Caucasus, which includes Georgia, Armenia, and the Republic of
Azerbaijan (Azarbaijan). Northern Iran and the eastern portions of
Turkey, which were annexed from Georgia and Armenia under the 1921
Treaty of Kars, can also be considered as being part of the South
Caucasus and by extension the entire Caucasus region.

Caucasia
has been the scene of an intensive struggle between the local
republics, internal actors, and external forces. These conflicts are
as follows;

(1) The conflict between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the breakaway state of Nagorno-Karabakh;(2) The conflict between Georgia and the breakaway state of South Ossetia;(3) The conflict between Georgia and the breakaway state of Abkhazia;(4)
The conflicts between the Russian Federation and the separatist
movements of the North Caucasus, specifically in Chechnya and
Dagestan;(5) The conflict between Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh;(6) And the conflict between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

For
decades tensions have existed in this ethnically diverse region.
Although steps have been taken by the Turks for strategic
cooperation with Moscow and Tehran, a regional axis between Russia,
Armenia, and Iran in the Caucasus has existed against Georgia,
the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Turkey. The aim of the
Moscow-Yerevan-Tehran Axis in the Caucasus is to prevent external
forces, specifically the U.S. and its NATO allies, from moving into
the Caucasus and the energy-rich Caspian Sea Basin.

The
primal conflict in the region has turned out to be the one between
Georgia and Russia, replacing the one between Russia and Chechnya.
This conflict has seen both sides supporting one
another’s separatist movements and covert operations. Tensions
between Tbilisi and the Kremlin have resulted in a war that, unlike
most the previous Caucasian wars, was of wide concern to outside
powers. The conflict has also been played out in Ukraine, where
both sides also supported rival political fractions.

Behind
Georgia lies the support of the U.S. and NATO. This is part of a
strategy that has seen indigenous players ally themselves with
U.S. geo-strategic interests in Eurasia. In fact, the entire war
between Russia and Georgia was premeditated and both sides were
preparing for it well in advance. The Times (U.K.)
inadvertently reported about this on September 5, 2008: “In the
months leading up to the doomed [Georgian] military operation to
seize control of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, Russian
fighter jets had flown into Georgian airspace on several
occasions.” [9] The Russian violation of Georgian airspace was
conducted, because the Russians were aware that a war was coming
and their forces were conducting reconnaissance missions.

In
the months leading up to the Russian-Georgian War over South
Ossetia the Georgian press was continuously talking about a coming
war. [10] Rezonansi, one of Georgia’s top newspapers,
had front-page headlines about the imminent dangers of a war:
“Will war in Abkhazia begin tomorrow?” [11] In May 2008, only a
month before the Russo-Georgian War, Moscow without notification
deployed 500 Russian troops into the southern Tkvarchel region of
Abkhazia under a peacekeeping mandate from the Commonwealth of
Independent States (C.I.S.), which raised its troop contingent to
2,542. [12] Before the deployment of additional Russian troops, on
April 20, 2008, the Russians had shot down a Georgian unmanned
aerial vehicle (UAV) spying over Abkhazia. [13]

In
a move that was one step short of official recognition, Moscow
also ended its agreement to sanction Abkhazia and in a move towards
bolstering the Abkhazian government began open communication with
it at official levels. [14] These Russian and Georgian moves were
made in preparation for the coming Caucasian war. The Kremlin
even openly accused Georgia of mobilizing troops to attack
Abkhazia, whereas the Georgians accused Russia of planning to
annex Abkhazia and South Ossetia. [15]

On
May 8, 2008 Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, publicly
stated: “I think that a few days ago, we were very close [to war]
and this threat is still real.” [16] On May 7, 2010, a day before
President Saakashvili’s statement, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution that condemned Russia for its
“provocative and dangerous statements and actions” in Georgia,
and the E.U. followed suit. [17] A day after the U.S. House of
Representatives passed their resolution against Russia and on the
same day as Saakashvili’s statements about war,
the foreign minister of Abkhazia, Sergei Shamba, went on the
record saying that Abkhazia wanted a military pact with Moscow.
[18] The Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWRP)
clearly documented the Russian preparations for the coming war with
Tbilisi. The IWPR report depicted the tense environment:

The
situation on the ground in the conflict zone remains tense. The
head of the de facto administration in Gali region in southern
Abkhazia, Ruslan Kishmaria, said Tbilisi had resumed unmanned
reconnaissance flights over Abkhazia. He added that the Abkhaz
authorities had decided not to shoot the planes down. The Abkhaz say
they have shot down several Georgian drones on previous
occasions, while Tbilisi denied that most of the alleged incidents
took place. In late May, a United Nations report concluded that a
drone shot down over Abkhazia on April 20 was hit by a Russian
fighter plane. [19]

What
is very revealing about the IWPR report are the clear steps that
Russia took in preparation for a Georgian attack. The report
highlighted the secret deployment of Russian anti-tank missiles into
Abkhazia:

Georgian
security forces have again had a confrontation with Russian
peacekeepers on the border with Abkhazia, leading to a tense telephone
conversation between the two presidents [of Georgia and Russia].
The detention of a Russian army truck by Georgian police appears
to be part of a war of nerves over the disputed territory of
Abkhazia. Tbilisi claims the Russians are engaged in annexing
Abkhazia and insists their peacekeeping forces must be disbanded,
while Moscow says the troops are operating under an international
mandate and are providing vital security for the Abkhaz. Georgian
television channels showed pictures of local police stopping a
truck carrying Russian peacekeepers near the village of Rukhi on
June 17. They reported that it was carrying weapons illegally
through the conflict zone, close to the administrative border with
Abkhazia. The four soldiers on board the vehicle were released
after seven hours in detention. On June 19, the truck was handed
back but the Georgians said they were holding onto 20 anti-tank
missiles pending an investigation. The Georgians said that the
Russians had not asked permission to transport the missiles as
they were required to do under the terms that govern the
peacekeeping presence. Colonel Vladimir Rogozin, commander of the
southern zone of the peacekeeping operation – which comes under
the mandate of the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS, but is
entirely manned by Russian troops – said he had simply failed to
inform the Georgians about the arms shipment in time. “They were
normal weapons permitted by our mandate, and I don’t understand why
the Georgians detained our soldiers,” said Rogozin. [20]

The
Russian military breached its peacekeeping mandate in Georgia.
The anti-tank missiles were intended for use against Georgian
tanks. The deployment of the anti-tank missiles were
(deliberately) not announced as part of Moscow’s
war preparations. In part, the Russian position in Abkhazia and
South Ossetia has been intended to prevent Georgia from joining
NATO, because NATO cannot accept new members unless all their
internal disputes are settled and their boundaries fixed. In
effect, Russian support of Abkhazia and South Ossetia has
protected Russia from further NATO encroachment.

The
war in 2008 has been described as a proxy war in which Georgia
acted on behalf of the U.S. against Russia by Sergey A. Markov, a
co-chair of the National Strategic Council of Russia. In this context, Russia was attacked by the U.S. and NATO. The
Georgians could not have known about the deployment of Russian
anti-tank missiles without intelligence reports from the U.S. and
NATO. In 2008, NATO even made a revealing move about its
intentions in the Caucasus. Despite the fact that Georgia was not a
NATO member, NATO began to quickly integrate the Georgian air
defences with NATO air defences. [21]

After the 2008 war,
the U.S. and Tbilisi even revealed that they were making
preparations to construct military bases in Georgia. [22] The U.S.
military presence would not only have been used to aid the
Georgian military against Russian interests, but could have sent a
threatening message to Moscow about war with the U.S. if Russia
confronted Georgia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The U.S. bases
could also have been used to launch attacks against Russia’s
strategic ally Iran. It was revealed that during the Russo-Georgian
War the Russian military had attacked Georgian bases that were
planned for use in future U.S. and NATO operations against Iran.
[23]

Georgia
is one of the fastest militarizing states. To counter Georgian
militarization and NATO’s agenda for the Caucasus, the Kremlin has
beefed up Russian units in the North Caucasus and expanded its
military presence in Armenia. In August 2010, Russia and Armenia
signed a bilateral military agreement that committed Russia to
protecting Armenia and insuring Armenian security. [24] The new
Russo-Armenian military agreement has formally allowed Russia to
project its military power from Armenia towards Georgia and the
Republic of Azerbaijan, whereas the old mandate of Russian troops in
Armenia was to provide border security for the Armenian-Turkish
and Armenian-Iranian borders. These strategic steps taken by Moscow
and Yerevan are in preparation for further crises in the
Caucasus.

The Balkans Front: Treachery against Yugoslavia and Moldova

The
Balkans has been galvanized by two different forces, those
aligned with the Eurasia Heartland and those aligned with the
Periphery. This animosity is similar to those that are dividing
Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Georgia, Latin America, and
the Ukraine. The largest camp of opposition to the U.S. and NATO
is in Serbia. This Serbian camp, along with its allies in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, wants either entry into the
orbit of Russia and the Eurasians or cooperation with them. The
opposing and dominate political camp wants Serbia and the Balkans
to enter the orbit of the U.S., the E.U., and NATO. The Serbian
Radical Party was formed originally as a member of the first
group, while Boris Tadić and his Democratic Party represent the
later group in Serbia and the Balkans.

The Balkans is a hub
for military operations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
The position of the former Yugoslavia was very important in this
context. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was an
independent geo-political player. Like the present role of Iran in the
Middle East, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia could
have prevented the U.S. and NATO from consolidating their control
of the Balkans, which would have been a major setback to the
implementation of the U.S. and NATO roadmap for control of
Eurasia. This is why the U.S. and its Western European allies
helped spark ethnic tension, specifically between the Serbs and
Croats, in Yugoslavia.

Yugoslavia
has fallen, but in the Balkans there is still a pending
geo-strategic game. This “game of chess” is over the fate of the
Serbian province of Kosovo, which is a self-declared republic
supported by the E.U. and America, and for the fate of the Serbian
Republic itself, as a whole. The people of Serbia have not forgotten
the NATO bombardment of their country, whereas most the corrupt
political elites in Belgrade have been cooperating with the U.S.
and NATO.

The so-called Twitter Revolution in Moldova was
also an extension of this struggle in the Balkans and tied to the
events in the former Yugoslavia and the issue of Kosovo. Moldova
could be used by Russia to reinforce the Russian position, and by
extension the Eurasian position, in Serbia and Eastern Europe.
Serbia has been flirting with both the E.U. and the U.S. on one
side and Russia on another. Both sides want to bring Serbia fully
into their orbits.

Serbia
is a landlocked nation in terms of not having direct access to
the open seas. Serbia, however, does have guaranteed access to the
Black Sea through the Danube River. The Danube River is actually
an international body of water that large merchant ships can sail.
By international treaty right, Serbian ships can freely sail the
Danube. Belgrade could always turn to the Danube if Serbia were to
be embargoed through the denial of land or airspace usage by its
neighbours under orders from the U.S. and the European Union. If
international laws were followed the Danube River would give the
Serbs a form of lifeline access to the Black Sea and Russia. To
prevent this all the states that the Danube River flows through
need to be controlled.

The
only other nations that the Danube River goes through that are
not within the orbit of the E.U. and the U.S. are Moldova, which
itself is landlocked too in the same sense as Serbia, and Ukraine.
Ukraine is a case in question, but the control of both Moldova and
Ukraine could effectively cut off Russian aid to Serbia through
the Black Sea and the Danube River in the future if Russia was
denied the usage of the airspace around Serbia. It is both in this
context and the context of forced integration into the E.U. that
Moldova’s neutrality has been ostracized by the U.S. and NATO
through Romania.

Yet,
there is more to the efforts to isolate Serbia. The Autonomous
Province of Vojvodina is where the Serbian coast on the Danube River
is located and is home to Serbia’s ports. About one-third of the
population in Vojvodina are non-Serbs with Hungarians (Magyars)
being the largest of these non-Serb minorities. Tacitly efforts to
divide Vojvodina from Serbia have also been underway. The Balkans
is a front that has become quiet for now, but Kosovo and
Vojvodina could easily light it up.

The Middle East Front: The Resistance Bloc versus the Coalition of the Moderate

The
Middle East is the energy centre of the global economy. Along
with Central Asia, it is one of the two most strategically
important areas on the world map. It is through control of the
Middle East that the U.S. and its NATO partners hope to contain
China, the anchor of the global counter-alliance to the U.S. and
NATO. In terms of regional power, Iran is the Yugoslavia of the
Middle East. Tehran has worked with its regional allies to resist
U.S., NATO, and Israeli control over the entire region. Thus, the
Iranians and their regional allies have provided a layer of
insulation for the Russians and the Chinese against U.S. and NATO
encroachment into Eurasia through resistance in the Middle East. In
other words, Iran and the Middle East are vital pillars of
Russian and Chinese resistance to trans-continental encirclement.

William
Arkin, one of America’s top security correspondents, stated in
2007 that the White House and Pentagon had started the process of
creating a NATO-like military alliance in the Middle East against
Iran and Syria. [25] According to Arkin this alliance was to be
comprised of the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council or
GCC (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab
Emirates) and both Egypt and Jordan. [26] Following the 2006
Israeli blunder in Lebanon, the U.S. and its main NATO partners
started sending, either directly or indirectly, massive arms
shipments to their clients in the Middle East: Egypt, Jordon,
Israel, the Palestinian collaborators Mahmoud Abbas in the West
Bank and Mohammed Dahlan in the Gaza Strip, Saudi Arabia, and the
Arab petro-sheikhdoms.

The
Lebanese militias belonging to the leaders of the March 14
Alliance in Lebanon also received secret weapons shipments to
combat Hezbollah and the Lebanese National Opposition. [27] Despite
their arms and U.S. support, the Arab collaborators in both the
Gaza Strip and Lebanon lost in internal fighting that broke out
respectively in June 2007 and May 2008. In Lebanon this resulted in
the formation of a national unity government after the Doha
Accord. It also caused Walid Jumblatt and the Progressive Socialist
Party to realign themselves with Hezbollah and to leave the March
14 Alliance.

It
was by the end of 2006 that Mahmoud Abbas, the March 14 Alliance,
Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Bahrain, Egypt, Jordon, and Kuwait
began to be called the “Coalition of the Moderate” by U.S. and
British officials. These countries have helped the U.S., NATO, and
Israel in intelligence operations against fellow Arabs, against
the Lebanese Resistance, and against the Palestinians. The
regime of Mohammed Husni (Hosni) Mubarak in Cairo has helped enforce
the Israeli siege against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Cairo has also been in several vocal rows against the
Palestinians, Hezbollah, members of the Iraqi Resistance, Syria,
and Iran. Mubarak has tried to justify working against the
Palestinians in Gaza by demonizing Hamas as an Iranian client and
as a threat to Egypt. There is even talk about some form of
Egyptian and Jordanian military intervention in Lebanon after the
Special Tribunal for Lebanon releases its findings about the Hariri
Assassination.

During the 2008 Israeli siege of Gaza,
Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah made a direct plea
to the Egyptian people, asking them to demand that their
government open the borders for relief to the Palestinian people.
Nasrallah’s plea, which made it a point to say that it was not
asking for a coup in Cairo, was met by anger from Egyptian
officials who had tried every means to publicly justify Israeli
actions against the Palestinians. Ahmed Abul Gheit, the foreign
minister of Egypt, responded by telling reporters in Turkey that
Nasrallah wanted chaos in Egypt like in Lebanon and that the
Egyptian military could be used against Nasrallah and people like him.

Mustafa
Al-Faqi, the head of the Egyptian parliamentary foreign relations
committee, has been quoted as saying that Cairo will not accept
an Islamic emirate on its border. [28] This language is part of
the campaign to portray Hamas as a Taliban-like organization, when
the leadership of Cario and the Arab World know fully that Hamas
is nothing like the Taliban government of pre-invasion
Afghanistan. In 2010, a high-ranking Egyptian intelligence officer
was caught spying and collecting information in the Gaza Strip by
the Hamas-led Palestinian government there. [29] The regime in
Egypt has also allowed Israel to send its German-built submarines
with nuclear cruise missiles across the Suez Canal to head into
the Persian Gulf towards Iranian waters in an effort to militarily
threaten Tehran through a permanent deployment. [30] The extent
of Egyptian ties with Tel Aviv is best described by a news report
quoting Amos Gilad, an Israeli military official:

Egypt-Israel
relations are “a cornerstone in Israel’s national security,” said Amos
Gilad, head of the Defense [sic.] Ministry’s Security-Diplomatic
Bureau, at a ceremony marking 30 years to Israel's peace agreement
with Egypt on Thursday. “We have very profound dialogue with
them. It’s important for Israel to know how to preserve these
relations and deepen them,” he said, while mentioning Egypt’s
“tolerant stance during [Israel’s] recent [2008] military
offensive in Gaza.” [31]

Saudi
Arabia too has been very actively involved in assisting the U.S.,
Britain, and Israel in their operations in the Middle East. The
mega-sized weapons sales the U.S. has made to Saudi Arabia, without
any objections from Tel Aviv and its lobbyists, is directed
against Iran, Syria, and any revolts and democracy movements in
the Arabian Peninsula, such as the Houthis in Yemen. The Saudi
arms deals that the U.S. has made are a vital part of its
strategic aims to control the energy resources of the Middle East.
[32]

Saudi-owned
media consistently spews sectarian hatred and propaganda against
any forces resisting the U.S., Israel, NATO, and their local
clients and allies in the Middle East and the Arab World. This has
reached a point where most rational adults do not take
Saudi-owned media, like Asharq Al-Aswat and its editor-in-chief, seriously. For example Asharq Al-Aswat
has systematically and falsely accused Hezbollah of torturing
Sunni Muslims in Lebanon and of occupying Beirut and has
continuously targeted Iran at every chance, claiming that the
Iranians are an imminent danger to the Arab World, while
downplaying the actions of the U.S. and Israel against Arab
countries.

In
opposition, the Coalition of the Moderate is commonly described
and thought of as nothing more than as Arab collaborators or
traitors. Its leaders, from the U.A.E. to Egypt, say one thing in
public and decide something entirely different behind closed doors.
The Coalition of the Moderate is a catch phrase designed by those
who coined the terms “Shia Crescent” and “Sunni Triangle” to
demonize the forces of resistance in the Middle East. [33] These
terms serve the war, balkanization, and finlandization agendas in
the Middle East.

On
the other side of the chasm stand Iran and all the forces opposed
to foreign intervention in the Middle East; these forces have
been called the “Radicals” by the White House. In reality, Iran
and these independent and indigenous forces form the “Resistance
Bloc” in the Middle East. The Resistance Bloc is not a formal
alliance nor is it organized as a genuine bloc, but its members
all share a common interest against foreign control of their
societies. The members of the Resistance Bloc are as follows;

(1)
The democratically-elected Hamas-led Palestinian government in
the Gaza Strip and all the Palestinians groups, including Hamas,
the Popular Palestinian Struggle Front, the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, the Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, and the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, that are opposed to Israel, the U.S., and Mahmoud
Abbas;(2) Lebanon, more or less as a state, as well as
Hezbollah, the Free Patriotic Movement, the Amal Movement, the El
Marada Movement, the Lebanese Communist Party, the Lebanese
Democratic Party, the Lebanese Islamic Front, the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (Tashnaq), the Syrian Social Nationalist
Party of Lebanon, and their political allies in Lebanon;(3) The multitude of various political and combative Iraqi groups that form the Iraqi Resistance;(4) Sudan;(5) Syria;(6) The rebel groups in Yemen, which are Shiite Muslims in the north and west and include Sunni Muslims in the south and east;(7) And Iran.

Qatar
and Oman closely coordinate with the Resistance Bloc. Oman is
also considered an Iranian ally in Tehran. Both Qatari and Omani
leaders exercise flexible foreign policies and realize that it
would be against their national interests to contain themselves in
any regional alliance against Iran and the Resistance Bloc or, by
the same token, even against the U.S. and its regional clients.
This is why Qatar and Oman are used as intermediaries between Iran
and the Resistance Bloc on one side and the U.S. and the Coalition
of the Moderate on the other side.

Since 2009 and 2010,
the position of Turkey is not clear. Ankara has begun to publicly
criticize its Israeli ally and is beginning to be touted by Iran
and Syria as a member of their Resistance Bloc. Turkey has also
entered into agreements with Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Russia that
look like the seeds for the creation of a common market and
political bloc in the Middle East that would mirror the European
Union.

U.S. influence in the Middle East is said to be
ending. It appears that many American allies and clients in the
Middle East are also looking at switching camps to protect their
interests. This could be the case within the March 14 Alliance in
Lebanon and in regards to Ankara.

In
the Middle East, the frontlines for Eurasia are the Palestinian
Territories, Lebanon, occupied Iraq, and Yemen. Yemen, situated on
the southernmost tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is the newest of
these frontlines in the Middle East and is geo-strategically
located on an important point on the map. The maritime corridor
running past Yemen is internationally the most important in terms
of shipping. The Red Sea connects to the Indian Ocean through the Gate of Tears (Bab al-Mandeb) that runs through the Gulf of Aden.

The
danger of a catastrophic global war igniting from the Middle East
exists. The front in the Middle East is central to the U.S.
strategy in Eurasia. Since 2001, this front has been fluctuating
between cold and hot wars that are now aimed at containing Iran and
its allies. The region is both a powder keg and geo-political
volcano.

The Central Asian Front: A War for Control of the Heartland of Eurasia

Central
Asia is the heart of Eurasia and at the centre of the Eurasian
Heartland. The U.S. and NATO push into Eurasia is aimed at control
of this region in its entirety. The region is a major
geo-strategic hub that conveniently flanks Iran, China, Russia,
the Caspian Sea, and the Indian sub-continent. From a military and
spatial standpoint, Central Asia is an ideal place to create a
wedge between the major Eurasian powers and to establish a
military presence for future operations in Eurasia.

Central
Asia, as the bulk of an area called the “Eurasian Balkans” (the
other portions include Georgia, Armenia, the Republic of
Azerbaijan, the Caucasian constituent republics of the South
Federal District and the North Caucasian Federal District of the
Russian Federation, Iran, and Turkey to a limited extent), can also
be used to destabilize the areas it flanks and Eurasia. The NATO
occupation of Afghanistan is tied to this objective. Atollah
Loudin, an Afghan official who is the chair of the Justice and
Judiciary Committee of Afghanistan, has gone on the record to say
that the U.S. is using Afghanistan as a military and intelligence
base to infiltrate and pursue its strategic objectives in
Pakistan, Central Asia, Russia, Iran, and China. [34]

Central
Asia also has vast oil, natural gas, and mineral resources. The
energy resources of the region rival those of the Middle East. In
the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski: “As an overlay to all this,
Central Asia now witnesses a very complicated inter-play among the
regional states and Russia, the United States (especially since
September 11, 2001), and China.” [35] The 2001 invasion of
Taliban-controlled Afghanistan was initiated with the objective of
establishing a foothold in Central Asia and a base of operations
to isolate Iran, divide the Eurasians from one another, to prevent
the construction of pipelines going through Iran, to distance the
Central Asian countries from Moscow, to take control of the flow
of Central Asian energy, and to strategically strangle the
Chinese.

Most
importantly, control over Central Asia would disrupt the “New
Silk Road” being formed from East Asia to the Middle East and
Eastern Europe. It is this “New Silk Road” that will make China
the next global superpower. Thus, the U.S. strategy in Central
Asia is meant to ultimately prevent the emergence of China as a
global superpower by preventing the Chinese from having access to
the vital energy resources they need. The U.S. and E.U. rivalry
with Russia over energy transit routes has to be judged alongside
preventing the construction of a trans-Eurasian energy corridor
from reaching China from the Caspian Sea Basin and from the Persian
Gulf.

Central
Asia has been the scene of war and colour revolutions. An active
war still rages in Afghanistan, which has spread into Pakistan.
The instability in Kyrgyzstan could spill over into becoming a
civil war. Any future conflict against Iran, Syria, and Lebanon
also threatens to engulf Central Asia.

The South Asia and Indian Ocean Fronts: Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and the Waves

South
Asia or the Indian sub-continent is comprised of Pakistan, India,
Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and the island states of Sri Lanka and
the Maldives. Afghanistan is sometimes considered a part of South
Asia. Similar to Central Asia, the northern portion of South Asia,
which is Pakistan and the northern states of the Republic of
India, serves as a transit land route between the Middle East and
East Asia. This northern area also straddles Central Asia. The
southern portions of South Asia is also centrally located in
regards to the Indian Ocean and both the southern portion of South
Asia, which is the southern tip of India, Sri Lanka, and the
Maldives, and the Indian Ocean littoral serve as a transit
maritime route from the Middle East and Africa to East Asia

In
South Asia, the aims of the U.S and NATO are to prevent the
creation of a secure energy route to China and to control the flow
of energy resources and the territories they would go through.
India also shares an interest in this. Indian cooperation with the
U.S. and NATO, however, comes at the expense of Indian national
security. The instability in Kashmir is an example.

The
instability in Pakistan is a direct result of the goal of preventing
the creation of a secure energy route to China. The U.S. and NATO
do not want a strong, stable, and independent Pakistan. They
would rather see a divided and feeble Pakistan that can easily be
controlled and would not take orders from Beijing or ally itself
within the Eurasian camp. The instability in Pakistan and the
terrorist attacks against Iran that have been originating from the
Pakistani border are meant to prevent the establishment of a
secure energy route to China.

Moreover,
U.S and NATO objectives in South Asia also include using India as
a counter-weight against China. This is the same strategy that
Britain applied on the European continent between various European
powers and the same strategy the U.S. used in the Middle East in
regards to Iran and Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War. In this context,
after the 2010 NATO Summit in Lisbon, NATO has asked for military
ands security dialogue with New Delhi. [36]

The
rivalries between the U.S., China, and India have had a direct
bearing on the militarization of the Indian Ocean. A naval arms race
has been underway in the Indian Ocean. Both India and China are
racing to procure and build as many naval ports as possible while
they expand their navies.

The
maritime shipping route that passes the territorial waters of Sri
Lanka is vital to Chinese energy security. In this context,
geo-politics also has had a direct impact on the nature of the Sri
Lankan Civil War. In 2009, the Chinese and their allies supported the
Sri Lankan government in the hope of seeing a stable political
environment on the island state so as to secure the Chinese naval
presence and the cooperation of Sri Lanka. After the end of the Sri
Lankan Civil War, Colombo joined the SCO as a “dialogue partner”
like Belarus.

The
militarization of the Indian Ocean has not stopped and is merely
underway. Internal tensions in Pakistan and India, the regional
tensions in South Asia between its states, and the tensions between
New Delhi and Beijing all are threats to Eurasian cohesion and
security.

The East Africa Front: Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan

In
East Africa the U.S. and NATO strategy is to block China from
access to regional energy resources and to setup a choke point to
control international shipping. Like Central Asia, U.S. aims in East
Africa, as well as the entire African continent, are to hinder
China from superpower status. Military control over East Africa and
its geo-strategically important waters has been intensifying since
the 1990s. A large NATO naval armada permanently sails in the
waves off the Horn of Africa and off the coast of East Africa ready
to cordon the seas. The involvement of the U.S. military in Yemen
is directly tied to the U.S. geo-strategy in East Africa and
plans to control the maritime waterways there, as well as East
African energy and the movement of international shipping. The
piracy problem off the coast of Somalia and the demonization of
Sudan are consequences of these strategic objectives.

Looking
at Somalia, the conditions that have led to the piracy problem
were nurtured to give the U.S. and NATO a pretext for militarizing
the strategic waterways of the region. The U.S. and NATO have
wanted anything except for stability in the Horn of Africa. In
December 2006 the Ethiopian military invaded Somalia and overthrew
the Islamic Courts Union (I.C.U.) government of Somalia. The
Ethiopian invasion took place at a point in Somalia when the I.C.U.
government had relatively stabilized Somalia and was close to
bringing a state of lasting peace and order to the entire African
country.

U.S.
Central Command (CENTCOM) coordinated the 2006 invasion of
Somalia. The Ethiopian land invasion was synchronized with the U.S.
military and saw the joint intervention of the U.S. military
alongside the Ethiopians through U.S. Special Forces and U.S.
aerial attacks. [37] General John Abizaid, the commander of
CENTCOM, went to Ethiopia and held a low-profile meeting with Prime
Minister Meles Zenawi on December 4, 2006 to plan the attack on
Somalia. Approximately three weeks later the U.S. and Ethiopia both
attacked and invaded Somalia. [38]

The
Somali I.C.U. government was defeated and removed from power and
in its place the Somalian Transitional Government (STG), an
unpopular government subservient to U.S. and E.U. edicts, was
brought to power under the Ethiopian and U.S. military
intervention. Marshall law was also imposed in Somalia by the
Ethiopian military. At the international level, the I.C.U.
government was demonized and the invasion was justified by the
U.S., Britain, Ethiopia, NATO, and the Somalian Transitional
Government as a part of the “Global War on Terror” and a war
against sympathisers and allies of Al-Qaeda.

The
Somalian Transitional Government and its leaders were immediately
accused of collaborating in the dismantling of Somalia and being
clients of the U.S. and other foreign powers by Somali
parliamentarians and citizens. [39] The Speaker of the Transitional
Somali Parliament, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, accused Ethiopia of
deliberately sabotaging “any chance of peace in Somalia.” [40]
The Somali Speaker and other Somali parliamentarians who were
taking refuge in Kenya were immediately ordered to leave Kenya by
the Kenyan government for opposing the Ethiopian invasion of their
country. [41] Their expulsion was ordered at the behest of the
U.S. government.

The
extent of U.S. influence over Ethiopia and Kenya and of the U.S.
role in directing the invasion of Somalia can also be understood
by the testimony of Saifa Benaouda:

At
the Kenyan border, she was detained by soldiers, including three
Americans, who had American flag patches on their uniforms, she
said. She was then, by turns, imprisoned in Kenya, secretly
deported back to Mogadishu, then spirited to Ethiopia, where she
was fingerprinted and had her DNA taken by a man who said he was
American. She was interrogated by a group of men and women, who she
determined by their accents to be Americans and Europeans, she
said. [42]

Ethiopia
deliberately sabotaged the peace talks in next-door Somalia under
American orders. The country is now divided and in the north,
Puntland and Somaliland are virtually independent states. Instead of
the stability and peace that the I.C.U. government was bringing,
bands of pirates, militias, and a group called Harakat Al-Shabaab
al-Mujahideen or simply Al-Shabaab have been allowed to take
control of Somalia. Al-Shabaab is the equivalent of the pre-2001
Taliban in Afghanistan. [43]

The
instability brought about by Ethiopia and the U.S. has helped
justify the militarization of East Africa by the military forces of
the U.S. and NATO. The Russian, Chinese, and Iranian navies have
also deployed their warships into the region on anti-piracy and
maritime security missions. [44] These naval deployments, however,
are also strategically symmetric counter-moves to the U.S. and
NATO naval build-up in the waters of East Africa, from the Red Sea
to the Gulf of Aden.

Sudanese
oil goes to China and the trade relations of Khartoum are tied to
Beijing. This is why Russia and China oppose U.S., British, and
French efforts to internationalize the domestic problems of Sudan
at the U.N. Security Council. Moreover, it is due to Sudan’s
business ties to China that Sudanese leaders have been targeted by
the U.S. and E.U. as human rights violators, while the human
right records of the dictators that are their clients and allies
are ignored.

Although
the Republic of Sudan is not traditionally considered to be in
the Middle East, Khartoum has been engaged as a member of the
Resistance Bloc. Iran, Syria, and Sudan have been strengthening
their ties and cooperation since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The
Israeli war against the Lebanese and the subsequent deployment of
international military forces, predominately from NATO countries,
onto Lebanese soil and water did not go unnoticed in Sudan either.
In is in context of this resistance that Sudan has also been
deepening its military ties with Tehran and Damascus.

Sudanese
leaders have sworn to resist the entrance of NATO or any
international forces into their country. Sudan has made it clear
that they will see these forces as invaders who want to plunder the
national resources of Sudan. Second Vice-President Ali Osman Taha
of Sudan has vowed that the Sudanese government would maintain its
opposition to any foreign intervention under the pretext of
peacekeeping forces for Darfur (Darfour) and has hailed Hezbollah as
a model of resistance for Sudan. [45] In a show of solidarity for
Sudanese resistance, Dr. Ali Larijani on behalf of Iran has also
led an international parliamentary delegation to Khartoum, in
March 2009, when a politically-motivated arrest warrant was issued
by the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) for Omar Hassan
Ahmed Al-Basher, the Sudanese president.

Khartoum
has been under intense U.S. and E.U. pressure. While there is a
humanitarian crisis in Darfur, the underlying causes of the
conflict have been manipulated and distorted. The underlying
causes are intimately related to economic and strategic interests
and not ethnic cleansing. Both America and its E.U. partners are
the main authors behind the fighting and instability in Darfur and
Southern Sudan. The U.S., the E.U., and Israel have assisted in
the training, financing, and arming of the militias and forces
opposed to the Sudanese government in these regions. They lay blame
squarely on Khartoum’s shoulders for any violence while they
themselves fuel conflict in order to move in and control the
energy resources of Sudan.

Tel
Aviv has boasted about militarily intervening in Sudan to upset
weapons transactions between Hamas and Iran going through Sudan and
Egypt, but Israeli activities have really been limited to sending
weapons to opposition groups and separatist movements in Sudan.
Israeli arms have entered Sudan from Ethiopia for years until
Eritrea became independent from Ethiopia, which made Ethiopia lose
its Red Sea coast, and bad relations developed between the
Ethiopians and Eritreans. Since then Israeli weapons have been
entering Southern Sudan from Kenya. The Sudan People’s Liberation
Movement (SPLM) in Southern Sudan has also been helping arm the
militias in Darfur. The Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF), a U.S.
client, has also been sending arms to both the militias in Darfur
and the SPLM.

The extent of Israeli influence with Sudanese opposition groups is significant. The Sudan Tribune reported on March 5, 2008 that separatist groups in Darfur and Southern Sudan had offices in Israel:

[Sudan
People’s Liberation Movement] supporters in Israel announced
establishment of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement office in
Israel, a press release said today.“After
consultation with the leadership of SPLM in Juba, the supporters
of SPLM in Israel have decided to establish the office of SPLM in
Israel.” Said [sic.] a statement received by email from Tel Aviv
signed by the SLMP secretariat in Israel. The
statement said that SPLM office would promote the policies and
the vision of the SPLM in the region. It further added that in
accordance with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement the SPLM has the
right to open in any country including Israel. It also indicated
that there are around 400 SPLM supporters in Israel. Darfur rebel
leader Abdel Wahid al-Nur said last week he opened an office in Tel
Aviv. [46]

There
is a power sharing arrangement between Omar Al-Basher and the
SPLM, which has a strong grip over Southern Sudan. The leader of
the SPLM, Salva Kiir Mayardit, is the First Vice-President of Sudan
and the President of Southern Sudan. The SPLM has strong ties
with Israel and its members and supporters regularly visit Israel
and Sudan’s other enemies. It is due to this that Khartoum removed
the Sudanese passport restriction on visiting Israel in late-2009
to satisfy the SPLM. [47] Salva Kiir Mayardit has also said that
Southern Sudan will recognize Israel when it separates from Sudan.

The events in Sudan and Somalia
are linked to the international thirst and rivalry for oil and
energy, but are also part of the aligning of a geo-strategic
chessboard revolving around control for Eurasia. The
militarization of East Africa is part of the preparations for a
confrontation with China and its allies. East Africa is an important
front that will heat up in the coming years.

The East Asia Front: The Shadow War against China

In
this current century, all roads lead to East Asia and China. This
will become more and more so as this century progresses. In East
Asia a shadow war is being waged against the Chinese. If the globe
were a chessboard and the rivals and opponents of the U.S. and
NATO were chess pieces, China would be the king piece, while
Russia would be the queen piece. The U.S. and NATO march to war
will ultimately lead to East Asia and the borders of the Chinese.
From the eyes of America, in the words of Brzezinski, “China is
unfinished business.” [48]

In
East Asia, the U.S. and its allies support the breakaway republic
of Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, and use it as a
strategic base against mainland China. Taiwan also administers some
of the small islands in the South China Sea, which along with
Taiwan Island or Formosa, overlook the strategic shipping lanes to
China. A missile shield project, similar to the one in Europe
directed against Russia and its CSTO allies, has also been in the
works in East Asia for years that includes the use of Taiwan.

The
U.S. and its allies are also interested in North Korea and
Myanmar as a means of encircling the Chinese. Both North Korea, in
Northeast Asia, and Myanmar, in Southeast Asia, are close Chinese
allies. The pretext of a threat from North Korea is being used to
justify the elements of the missile shield project being built in
Northeast Asia. Of special importance in Southeast Asia is the
port and naval facilities that Myanmar is constructing to give the
Chinese a far more secure energy lifeline in the Indian Ocean
that circumvents Malacca and Taiwan.There
have also been internal operations underway against Beijing. In
Chinese Turkistan, where Xinjiang Autonomous Region is located, the
U.S. and its allies have been supporting Uyghur separatism based
on a matrix of Uyghur ethnic nationalism, pan-Turkism, and Islam
to weaken China. In Tibet the aims are the same as in Xinjiang,
but the U.S. and its allies have been involved in far more
intensified intelligence operations there.

Breaking
Xinjiang and Tibet from China would heavily obstruct its rise as a
superpower. The estrangement of both Xinijang and Tibet would
take vast resources in these territories away from China and the
Chinese economy. It would also deny China direct access to the
ex-Soviet Republics of Central Asia. This would effectively
disrupt the land route in Eurasia and complicate the creation of
an energy corridor to China.

Any future governments in an
independent Xinjiang or an independent Tibet could act like
Ukraine under the Orangists in regards to disrupting Russian gas
supplies to the European Union over political differences and
transit prices. Beijing as an energy consumer could be held hostage
like European countries were during the Ukrainian-Russian gas
disputes. This is precisely one of the objectives of the U.S. in
regards to stunting the Chinese.

The
struggle in Latin America has spanned from South America to the
Caribbean and Central America or Mesoamerica. It has been a
struggle between the local or regional countries allied under the
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas or ALBA (Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas).
ALBA has pushed for political and economic self-determination in
an area that the leaders of the U.S. have seen as their own
“backyard” since 1823 under the Monroe Doctrine. In their struggle
for independence, these regional countries in Latin America and
the Carribean have become allied with the Eurasians against
America and its allies.

With
the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998 and the start of his
presidency in 1999, Venezuela became the force that would establish
the seeds of the Bolivarian Bloc, which is named after Simón José
Bolívar, the man who led Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Columbia,
Ecuador, and Panama to independence in their struggle against
Spain. The Bolivarian government in Caracas would go to the aid of
Cuba and end the American attempts to isolate Havana by openly
declaring solidarity with Cuba and expanding ties. The bilateral
agreements signed by Cuba and Venezuela would form the nucleus of
the Bolivarian Bloc and the model of the expanded format of the
alliance under ALBA.

In
2006, the alliance between Havana and Caracas began to take in
new members. In 2006, Evo Morales would become the new president
of Bolivia and Bolivia would become allied with both Venezuela and
Cuba. In 2007, one year later, Rafael Correa would become the
president of Ecuador and Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader,
would become the president of Nicaragua. Both Ecuador and
Nicaragua instantly joined the alliance between Bolivia, Cuba, and
Venezuela. In 2008, Honduras under President Manuel Zelaya, who
was elected in 2006, would also enter ALBA. In all these countries
the Bolivarian leaders would work for economic and constitutional
reform to remove the local oligarchies allied with U.S. interests
in Latin America.

To
reduce their dependency on the U.S., the Bolivarian Bloc has also
introduced its own unified regional monetary compensation
framework, called the SUCRE (Sistema Único de Compensación Regional).
[49] The implementation of the SUCRE follows the same steps as
the euro, being used initially on a virtual basis for trade and
eventually as a hard currency. This is part of a joint move away
from the U.S. dollar by the Bolivarians and the Eurasians.

The
White House, the Pentagon, the U.S. State Department, and the
U.S. Congress have viciously attacked the Bolivarian Bloc and its
leaders in language that exposes so-called U.S. democratic values
as being false pretexts for invasions and international
aggression. This U.S. rhetoric has also been in tune with a U.S.
program for regime change and covert operations in Latin America.
During the course of all these events the U.S. embassies and
American diplomats in these Latin American countries would be
implicated in supporting violence against the Bolivarian
governments.

In
2002, the U.S. supported a failed coup against Chávez by elements
of the Venezuelan military. In Bolivia, since 2006, the
leadership of the energy-rich eastern departments of Santa Cruz,
Beni, Pando, and Tarija started pushing for autonomy with the help
of U.S. funding from the Office of Transition Initiatives of the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In
2008, civil strife began when the leaders of the eastern
departments started to seize local government buildings, energy
facilities, and infrastructure as part of an attempt to separate
from Bolivia. The American-supported failed attempts to divide
Bolivia were part of the attempt by the U.S. government to retain
control over Bolivian natural gas.

In
Honduras, the weakest link in the Bolivarian Bloc, a military
coup d’état supported by the U.S., under the cloud of a
constitutional crisis, would replace Manuel Zelaya in 2008. The
outcry and clamour against the military coup in Honduras would be
so strong that the U.S. government would publicly act as if it
were opposed to the American-engineered coup in Honduras. A United
Nations General Assembly meeting under the presidency of Father
Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, a Christian priest of the Roman
Catholic Church, would unanimously condemn the coup in Honduras.
In 2010, the U.S. would also support an attempted coup in Ecuador
by police units against Rafael Correa and his government.

The
U.S. has been militarizing the Caribbean and Latin America to
regain its control of the Americas. The Pentagon has been arming
Columbia and deepening its military ties with Columbia to counter
Venezuela and its allies. On October 30, 2009 the Columbian and U.S.
governments would also sign an agreement that would allow the U.S
to use Columbian military bases.

American-garrisoned Haiti
also serves the broader hemispheric agenda of the U.S. to
challenge the Bolivarian Bloc using the westernmost ridge of the
island of Hispaniola. Haiti is located just south of Cuba.
Geographically it is situated in the best position to
simultaneously assault Cuba, Venezuela, and the states of Central
America, like Nicaragua. The catastrophic 2010 earthquakes and the
instability that the U.S. has created in Haiti through multiple
invasions of Haiti make the project to subvert the Caribbean and
Latin America far less conspicuous. Looking at the map and the
militarization of Haiti it is unambiguous that the U.S. plans to
use Haiti, like Columbia and Curaçao, as a hub for military and
intelligence operations. Haiti would also prove as an invaluable
base in the scenario of a broader conflict waged by the U.S. and
its proxies against Caracas and its regional allies.

It
is clear that U.S. is loosing its grip in the Americas. Not only
does the U.S. government want to prevent this, but it also wants
to ensure that it does not lose the energy reserves of countries
like Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia to the energy-hungry Chinese.
Under fair global competition there is no way that the U.S. will
be able to match what Beijing is willing to offer the nations of
Latin American and the Caribbean for their energy exports and
resources. Ultimately, the U.S. is still planning on resorting to
aggression in order to control Latin America and the Caribbean.
This is why the Bolivarians have allied themselves with Russia,
Iran, China, and their Eurasian entente.

The Arctic Front: Controlling Future Energy Reserves

Tense
rivalry involving the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the
Russian Federation has emerged in the Arctic Circle for the North
Pole’s vast resources. Aside from Russia, all the nations involved
are members of NATO. Russia has the greatest claim to the area due
to its territorial expanse in the region.

Under
the backdrop of this rivalry for natural resources, the Arctic
Circle is being militarized by NATO and Russia. In Orwellian terms,
these NATO countries claim that they are working for peace and
stability through military means and the improvement of their combat
capabilities in an area of the globe that does not need a large
military presence. Logically this is nothing other than
double-speak. Why the need for better combat readiness and
capabilities in the Arctic? In this context, the U.S., Canada,
Denmark, and Norway have been working together against the Russian
Federation.

Canada
and the U.S. have also been streamlining their Arctic policies,
because Canada is the strongest challenger in terms of territorial
size to Russia. The U.S. is working through Canada to tap the
energy resources of the Arctic. Both Ottawa and Moscow have claimed
the Lomonosov Ridge as an extension of their continental shelves.

Prime
Minister Steven Harper and the Canadian government have demanded
that the underwater boundaries of the region be settled and have
diplomatically warned Moscow to stand-down in regards to the
Russian claim to the Arctic: “Canada will maintain control of our
Arctic lands and waters and will respond when others take actions
that affect our national interests.” [50] Ottawa’s three Arctic
priorities are:

(1) Demarcating the Arctic;(2)
Receiving international recognition of Canadian control over the
Lomonosov Ridge as an extension of the continental shelf extending
from Canadian territory;(3) An Arctic security regime under the platform of Arctic governance and emergency measures. [51]

The
NATO agenda in the Arctic starts as early as 2006, when Norway
invited all NATO and its associates for its Cold Response drills.
Canada too has continuously held Arctic exercises to demonstrate its
sovereignty in the Arctic, but starting in 2010 U.S. and Danish
troops were involved in Operation Nanook 10. [52] This is a sign of
NATO cooperation against Russia. According to a Canadian military
press release the military drills were intended “to strengthen
preparedness, increase interoperability and exercise a collective
response to emerging challenges in the Arctic.” [53] Aside from a
Russian claim to the Lomonosov Ridge, there is no other situation
that could be seen as an emerging challenge that warrants a
collective military response by Canada, the U.S., and Denmark.

The
battle over the Arctic is well underway. By virtue of its
territory, Russia has the largest territorial claim. Yet, the U.S.,
Canada, and Denmark refuse to recognized this. A crisis between
NATO and Russia, which will be supported by China, over claims
about Arctic resources will emerge at a future point.

Russia’s
top military officer has threatened to carry a pre-emptive strike on
Nato missile defence facilities in Eastern Europe if America goes
ahead with a plan to build a missile shield. The comments came at an
international conference attended by senior US and officials of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation over the proposed project. Talks
looked set to end in failure yesterday after Russian defence minister
Anatoly Serdyukov warned they were “close to a dead end”.

Moscow
fears its security will be threatened by the missile plan. Russia’s
chief of general staff General Nikolai Makarov said: “A decision to use
destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation
worsens.” Moscow rejects Washington’s claim the missile system is
solely to deal with any Iranian missile threat and has voiced fears it
could undermine Russia’s nuclear deterrent. Moscow has proposed
running the missile shield jointly with Nato, but the alliance has
rejected that proposal.

Gen
Makarov’s statement does not appear to imply an immediate threat, but
aims to put extra pressure on Washington to agree to Russia’s demands.
The two-day conference in Moscow is the last major Russia-US meeting
about military issues before a Nato summit in Chicago this month.
Russia has not yet said whether it will send a top-level delegation.
In a lively exchange during a conference side session, officials
talked about the high level of distrust between the two sides.

“We
can’t just reject the distrust that has been around for decades and
become totally different people,” Russian deputy defence minister
Anatoly Antonov said. “Why are they calling on me, on my Russian
colleagues, to reject distrust? Better look at yourselves in the
mirror.”

US State Department
special envoy Ellen Tauscher said neither country could afford another
arms race. She said: “It’s going to have to take a political leap of
faith and it’s going to take some trust that we have to borrow,
perhaps, from each other and for each other, but why don’t we do it for
the next generation?” President Barack Obama’s administration tried
to ease tensions with Russia in 2009 by saying it would revamp a plan
to emphasise shorter-range interceptors. Russia initially welcomed
that but has recently suggested the new interceptors could threaten
its missiles as the US interceptors are upgraded.

The
US-Nato missile defence plans use Aegis radars and interceptors on
ships and a more powerful radar based in Turkey in the first phase,
followed by radar and interceptor facilities in Romania and Poland.
Russia would not plan any retaliation unless the US goes through with
its plans and takes the third and final step and deploys defence
elements in Poland, Mr Antonov said. That is estimated to happen no
earlier than in 2018.

Russia has
just commissioned a radar in Kaliningrad, near the Polish border,
capable of monitoring missile launches from Europe and the North
Atlantic. Yesterday, at the start of the conference attended by
representatives of about 50 countries, Russia’s Security Council
secretary reiterated an offer to run the missile shield with Nato.
Nikolai Patrushev said this “could strengthen the security of every
single country of the continent” and “will not deter strategic
security.”

Nato deputy secretary
general, Alexander Vershbow, insisted the missile shield was “not and
will not be directed against Russia” and that Russia’s intercontinental
ballistic missiles were “too fast and too sophisticated” for the
system to intercept.

Most in the civilized world are blissfully unaware that we are marching ineluctably towards an increasingly likely pre-emptive nuclear war. No, it's not at all about Iran and Israel. It's about the decision of Washington and the Pentagon to push Moscow up against the wall with what is euphemistically called Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD).

On November 23, a normally low-keyed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the world in clear terms that Russia was prepared to deploy its missiles on the border to the EU between Poland and Lithuania, and possibly in the south near Georgia and NATO member Turkey to counter the advanced construction process of the US ballistic missile defense shield: "The Russian Federation will deploy in the west and the south of the country modern weapons systems that could be used to destroy the European component of the US missile defense," he announced on Russian television. "One of these steps could be the deployment of the Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad."1

Those would be theatre ballistic missile systems. The latest version of Iskander, the Iskander-K, whose details remain top secret, reportedly has a range up to 2000 km and carries cruise missiles and a target accuracy to 7 meters or less.

Medvedev declared he has ordered the Russian defense ministry to "immediately" put radar systems in Kaliningrad that warn of incoming missile attacks on a state of combat readiness. He called for extending the targeting range of Russia's strategic nuclear missile forces and re-equipping Russia's nuclear arsenal with new warheads capable of piercing the US/NATO defense shield due to become operational in six years, by 2018. Medvedev also threatened to pull Russia out of the New START missile reduction treaty if the United States moves as announced.

Medvedev then correctly pointed to the inevitable link between “defensive” missiles and “offensive” missiles: “Given the intrinsic link between strategic offensive and defensive arms, conditions for our withdrawal from the New Start treaty could also arise,” he said.2

The Russian President didn’t mince words: “I have ordered the armed forces to develop measures to ensure, if necessary, that we can destroy the command and control systems” of the US shield, Medvedev said. “These measures are appropriate, effective and low-cost.” Russia has repeatedly warned that the US BMD global shield is designed to destabilize the nuclear balance and risks provoking a new arms race. The Russian President said that rather than take the Russian concerns seriously, Washington has instead been “accelerating” its BMD development.3

It was not the first time Medvedev threatened to take countermeasures to the increasing Pentagon military encirclement pressure on Russia. Back in November 2008 as the US BMD threat was first made known to the world, Medvedev made a televised address to the Russian people in which he declared, “I would add something about what we have had to face in recent years: what is it? It is the construction of a global missile defense system, the installation of military bases around Russia, the unbridled expansion of NATO and other similar ‘presents’ for Russia ­ we therefore have every reason to believe that they are simply testing our strength.” 4 That threat was dropped some months later when the Obama Administration offered the now-clearly deceptive olive branch of reversing the BMD decision to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russia is threatening to deploy its Iskander anti-BMD missiles in Kaliningrad

This time around Washington lost no time signaling it was in the developing game of thermonuclear chicken to stay. No more pretty words about “reset” in US-Russia relations. A spokesman for the Obama National Security Council declared, “we will not in any way limit or change our deployment plans for Europe." The US Administration continues to insist on the implausible argument that the missile defense installations are aimed at a threat from a possible Iranian nuclear launch, something hardly credible. The real risk of Iranian nuclear missile attack on Europe given the reality of the global US as well as Israeli BMD installations and the reality of Iran's nuclear delivery capabilities, is by best impartial accounts, near zero.

Two days earlier on November 21, Washington had thrown a small carrot to Moscow. US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher said that Washington was ready to provide information about the missile's speed after it uses up all of its fuel. This information, referred to as burnout velocity (VBO), helps to determine how to target it.5 That clearly was not seen as a serious concession by Moscow, which demands a full hands-on partnership with the US/NATO missile deployment to insure it will never be used against Russia. After all, given Washington's track record of lies and broken promises, there is no guarantee the speeds would even be true.

After the early October Brussels NATO defense ministers meeting, NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in regard to the nominally NATO European Missile Defense Program, “We would expect it to be fully operational in 2018." Spain just announced it plans to join the US-controlled missile program, joining Romania, Poland, the Netherlands and Turkey, which have already agreed to deploy key components of the future missile defense network on their territories.6

The concerns of Russia are caused by the dramatic improvement of an entire system of missile defense by Washington, which is taking the form of a global BMD system encircling Russia on all sides.

Full Spectrum Dominance…

The last time Washington's Missile Defense "Shield" made headlines was in September 2009 early in the Obama Administration when the US President offered to downgrade the provocative stationing of US special radar and anti-missile missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. That was a clear tactic to prepare the way for what Hillary Clinton ludicrously called the "reset" in US-Russian relations from the tense Bush-Putin days. However the strategic goal of encircling the one nuclear potential opponent in the world with credible missile defense remained US strategy.

Barack Obama announced back then that the US was altering Bush Administration plans to station US anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and sophisticated radar in the Czech Republic. The news was greeted in Moscow as an important concession.7 Subsequent developments clearly show that far from ditching its plans for a missile shield that could cripple any potential Russian nuclear launch, the US was merely opting for a more effective global system, whose feasibility had been proven in the meantime.

To assuage the Poles, the Obama Administration also agreed to provide Poland with US Patriot missiles. Poland’s Foreign Minister then and now is Radek Sikorski. From 2002 to 2005 he was in Washington as a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a noted neo-conservative hawkish think-tank, and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative, a project to bring as many former communist countries of eastern Europe into NATO as possible. Little wonder Moscow did not view US missiles in Poland as friendly, nor does it today.

In May 2011 the Obama Administration announced that the missiles it would now give Poland consisted of new Raytheon (RTN) SM-3 missile defense systems at the Redzikowo military base in Poland (see map), roughly 50 miles from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, a unique piece of Russian real estate not connected to mainland Russia, but adjacent to the Baltic Sea and Lithuania. That puts US missiles closer to Russia than during the 1961 Cuba Missile Crisis when Washington placed ICBM’s at sites in Turkey aimed at key Soviet nuclear sites. 8

The new Raytheon SM-3 missile is part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System that will be aimed at intercepting short to intermediate range ballistic missiles. The SM-3 Kinetic Warhead intercepts incoming ballistic missiles outside the earth's atmosphere. Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems and Sensors developed the Aegis BMD Weapon System. The SM-3 comes from Raytheon Missile Systems.

The Polish SM-3 missile deployment is but one part of a global web encircling Russia’s nuclear capacities. One should not forget that official Pentagon military strategy is called Full Spectrum Dominance—control of pretty much the entire universe. This past September the US and Romania, another new NATO member, signed an agreement to deploy a US-controlled Missile Defense System on the Deveselu Air Base in Romania using the SM-3 missiles.

As well Washington has signed an agreement with NATO member Turkey to place a sophisticated missile tracking radar atop a high mountain in the Kuluncak district of Malatya province in south-eastern Turkey. Though the Pentagon insists its radar is pointed at Iran, a look at a map reveals how easily the focal direction could cover key Russian nuclear sites such as Stevastopol where the bulk of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet is stationed or to the vital Russian Krasnodar radar installation.9

The Malataya radar will send data to US ships equipped with the Aegis combat system that will intercept “Iranian” ballistic missiles. According to Russian military experts, one of the main aims of that radar, which targets at a range up to 2000 kilometers, will also be the surveillance and control of the air space of the South Caucasus, part of Central Asia as well as the south of Russia, in particular tracking the experimental launches of the Russian missiles at their test ranges.10

Further, the US-controlled BMD deployment now also includes sea-based “Aegis” systems in the Black Sea near Russia’s Sevastopol Naval Base, as well as possible deployment of intermediate range missiles in Black Sea and Caspian region.11

But the European BMS deployments of the US Pentagon are but a part of a huge global web. At the Fort Greeley Alaska Missile Field the US has installed BMD ground-based missile interceptors, as well as at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And the Pentagon just opened two missile sites at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii. To add to it, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has joined formally with the US Missile Defense Agency to develop a system of so-called Aegis BMD deploying the SM-3 Raytheon missiles on Japanese naval ships.12 That gives the US a Pacific platform from which it can hit both China and Russia’s Far East as well as the Korean Peninsula. These are all a pretty long and curious way to reach any Iranian threat.

Origins of US Missile Defense

The US program to build a global network of ‘defense’ against possible enemy ballistic missile attacks began back in March 23, 1983 when then-President Ronald Reagan proposed the program popularly known as Star Wars, formally called then the Strategic Defense Initiative.

In 1994 at a private dinner discussion with this author in Moscow, the former head of economic studies for the Soviet Union’s Institute of World Economy & International Relations, IMEMO, declared that it had been the huge financial demands required by Russia to keep pace with the multi-billion dollar US Star Wars effort that finally led to the economic collapse of the Warsaw Pact and to German reunification in 1990. With a losing war in Afghanistan, collapsing oil revenues caused by a 1986 US policy of flooding the world market with Saudi oil, the military economy of the USSR was unable to keep pace, short of risking massive civilian unrest across the Warsaw Pact nations.13

This time around the US BMD deployment is designed to bring Russia to her knees as well, only in the context of a US creation of what military strategists call “Nuclear Primacy.”

Nuclear Primacy: Thinking the Unthinkable

While the Soviet era armed forces have undergone a drastic shrinking down since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Russia has tenaciously held on to the core of its strategic nuclear deterrent. That is something that gives Washington pause when considering how to deal with Russia. The potential for Russia to deepen its military and economic cooperation with its Central Asian partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, above all with China, is something Washington has gone to great lengths to frustrate. Such a strategic cooperation is becoming increasingly a matter of life-or-death for both China and Russia. China’s nuclear arsenal is not yet strategic as is Russia’s.

What the Pentagon is going for is what it has dreamed of since the Soviets developed intercontinental ballistic missiles during the 1950’s. Weapons professionals term it Nuclear Primacy. Translated into layman’s language, Nuclear Primacy means that if one of two evenly-matched nuclear foes is able to deploy even a crude anti-ballistic missile defense system that can seriously damage the nuclear strike capacity of the other, while he launches a full-scale nuclear barrage against that foe, he has won the nuclear war.

The darker side of that military-strategic Nuclear Primacy coin is that the side without adequate offsetting BMD anti-missile defenses, as he watches his national security vanish with each new BMD missile and radar installation, is under growing pressure to launch a pre-emptive nuclear or other devastating strike before the window closes. That in simple words means that far from being “defensive” as Washington claims, BMD is offensive and destabilizing in the extreme. Moreover, those nations blissfully deluding themselves that by granting the Pentagon rights to install BMS infrastructure, that they are buying the security umbrella of the mighty United States Armed Forces, find that they have allowed their territory to become a potential nuclear field of battle in an ever more likely confrontation between Washington and Moscow.

Dr. Robert Bowman, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the US Air Force and former head of President Reagan’s BMD effort of the 1980’s, then dubbed derisively “Star Wars,” noted the true nature of Washington’s current ballistic missile “defense” under what is today called the Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency:

"Under Reagan and Bush I, it was the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). Under Clinton, it became the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). Now Bush II has made it the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and given it the freedom from oversight and audit previously enjoyed only by the black programs. If Congress doesn't act soon, this new independent agency may take their essentially unlimited budget and spend it outside of public and Congressional scrutiny on weapons that we won't know anything about until they're in space. In theory, then, the space warriors would rule the world, able to destroy any target on earth without warning. Will these new super weapons bring the American people security? Hardly."14

During the Cold War, the ability of both sides—the Warsaw Pact and NATO—to mutually annihilate one another, had led to a nuclear stalemate dubbed by military strategists, MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction. It was scary but, in a bizarre sense, more stable than what Washington now pursues relentlessly with its Ballistic Missile Defense in Europe, Asia and globally in unilateral pursuit of US nuclear primacy. MAD was based on the prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation with no decisive advantage for either side; it led to a world in which nuclear war had been ‘unthinkable.’ Now, the US was pursuing the possibility of nuclear war as ‘thinkable.’ Lt. Colonel Bowman, in a telephone interview with this author called missile defense, “the missing link to a First Strike.” 15

The fact is that Washington hides behind a NATO facade with its deployment of the European BMD, while keeping absolute US control over it. Russia's NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin recently called the European portion of the US BMD a fig leaf for "a missile defense umbrella that says 'Made in USA. European NATO members will have neither a button to push nor a finger to push it with.” 16

That’s clearly why Russia continues to insist on guarantees - from the United States - that the shield is not directed against Russia. Worryingly enough, to date Washington has categorically refused that. Could it be that the dear souls in Washington entrusted with maintaining world peace have gone bonkers? In any case the fact that Washington continues to tear up solemn international arms treaties and illegally proceed to install its global missile shield is basis enough for those in Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere to regard US promises, even treaties as not worth the paper they were written on.

F. William Engdahl may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. His newest book on oil geopolitics, titled Myths, Lies and Oil Wars is due out by spring of 2012.

“But
if the middle space [Russia and the former Soviet Union] rebuffs
the West [the European Union and America], becomes an assertive
single entity, and either gains control over the South [Middle
East] or forms an alliance with the major Eastern actor [China],
then America’s primacy in Eurasia shrinks dramatically. The same
would be the case if the two major Eastern players were somehow
to unite. Finally, any ejection of America by its Western
partners [the Franco-German entente] from its perch on the
western periphery [Europe] would automatically spell the end of
America’s participation in the game on the Eurasian chessboard,
even though that would probably also mean the eventual
subordination of the western extremity to a revived player
occupying the middle space [e.g. Russia].”

-Zbigniew Brzezinski (The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, 1997)

Sir
Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that “for every action
there is an equal and opposite reaction.” These precepts of
physics can also be used in the social sciences, specifically
with reference to social relations and geo-politics. America and
Britain, the Anglo-American alliance, have engaged in an
ambitious project to control global energy resources. Their
actions have resulted in a series of complicated reactions, which
have established a Eurasian-based coalition which is preparing
to challenge the Anglo-American axis.Encircling Russia and China: Anglo-American Global Ambitions Backfire

“Today
we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force –
military force – in international relations, force that is plunging
the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do
not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to
any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also
becomes impossible. We are seeing a greater and greater disdain
for the basic principles of international law. And independent
legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer
to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and
foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders
in every way.” -Vladimir Putin at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in Germany (February 11, 2007)

What
American leaders and officials called the “New World Order” is
what the Chinese and Russians consider a “Unipolar World.” This is
the vision or hallucination, depending on perspective, that has
bridged the Sino-Russian divide between Beijing and Moscow. China
and Russia are well aware of the fact that they are targets of
the Anglo-American alliance. Their mutual fears of encirclement
have brought them together. It is no accident that in the same
year that NATO bombarded Yugoslavia, President Jiang Zemin of
China and President Boris Yeltsin of Russia made an anticipated
joint declaration at a historic summit in December of 1999 that
revealed that China and the Russian Federation would join hands
to resist the “New World Order.” The seeds for this Sino-Russian
declaration were in fact laid in 1996 when both sides declared
that they opposed the global imposition of single-state hegemony.Both
Jiang Zemin and Boris Yeltsin stated that all nation-states
should be treated equally, enjoy security, respect each other’s
sovereignty, and most importantly not interfere in the internal
affairs of other nation-states. These statements were directed at
the U.S. government and its partners. The Chinese and Russians also
called for the establishment of a more equitable economic and
political global order. Both nations also indicated that America
was behind separatist movements in their respective countries. They
also underscored American-led amibitions to balkanize and
finlandize the nation-states of Eurasia. Influential Americans such
as Zbigniew Brzezinski had already advocated for de-centralizing
and eventually dividing up the Russian Federation.Both
the Chinese and Russians issued a statement warning that the
creation of an international missile shield and the contravention of
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) would destabilize
the international environment and polarize the globe. In 1999,
the Chinese and Russians were aware of what was to come and the
direction that America was headed towards. In June 2002, less than
a year before the onslaught of the “Global War on Terror,” George
W. Bush Jr. announced that the U.S. was withdrawing from the ABM
Treaty. On July 24, 2001, less than two months before September
11, 2001, China and Russia signed the Treaty of
Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation. The latter is a
softly worded mutual defence pact against the U.S., NATO, and the
U.S. sponsored Asian military network which was surrounding
China. [1]The
military pact of the Shanghai Treaty Organization (SCO) also
follows the same softly worded format. It is also worth noting that
Article 12 of the 2001 Sino-Russian bilateral treaty stipulates
that China and Russia will work together to maintain the global
strategic balance, “observation of the basic agreements relevant
to the safeguard and maintenance of strategic stability,” and
“promote the process of nuclear disarmament.” [2] This seems to be
an insinuation about a nuclear threat posed from the United
States. Standing in the Way of America and Britain: A
“Chinese-Russian-Iranian Coalition” As a result of the Anglo-American
drive to encircle and ultimately dismantle China and Russia,
Moscow and Beijing have joined ranks and the SCO has slowly evolved
and emerged in the heart of Eurasia as a powerful international
body.The
main objectives of the SCO are defensive in nature. The economic
objectives of the SCO are to integrate and unite Eurasian
economies against the economic and financial onslaught and
manipulation from the “Trilateral” of North America, Western
Europe, and Japan, which controls significant portions of the
global economy. The SCO charter was also created, using Western
national security jargon, to combat “terrorism, separatism, and
extremism.” Terrorist activities, separatist movements, and
extremist movements in Russia, China, and Central Asia are all
forces traditionally nurtured, funded, armed, and covertly supported
by the British and the U.S. governments. Several separatist and
extremist groups that have destabilized SCO members even have
offices in London.Iran,
India, Pakistan, and Mongolia are all SCO observer members. The
observer status of Iran in the SCO is misleading. Iran is a de
facto member. The observer status is intended to hide the nature
of trilateral cooperation between Iran, Russia, and China so that
the SCO cannot be labeled and demonized as an anti-American or
anti-Western military grouping. The stated interests of China and
Russia are to ensure the continuity of a “Multi-Polar World.”
Zbigniew Brzezinski prefigured in his 1997 book The Grand
Chessboard: American Primacy and the Geostrategic Imperatives and
warned against the creation or “emergence of a hostile
[Eurasian-based] coalition that could eventually seek to challenge
America’s primacy.” [3] He also called this potential Eurasian
coalition an “‘antihegemonic’ alliance” that would be formed from a
“Chinese-Russian-Iranian coalition” with China as its linchpin. [4]
This is the SCO and several Eurasian groups that are connected
to the SCO.In
1993, Brzezinski wrote “In assessing China’s future options, one
has to consider also the possibility that an economically
successful and politically self-confident China — but one which
feels excluded from the global system and which decides to become
both the advocate and the leader of the deprived states of the
world — may decide to pose not only an articulate doctrinal but
also a powerful geopolitical challenge to the dominant trilateral
world [a reference to the economic front formed by North America,
Western Europe, and Japan].” [5]Brzezinski
warns that Beijing’s answer to challenging the global status quo
would be the creation of a Chinese-Russian-Iranian coalition:
“For Chinese strategists, confronting the trilateral coalition of
America and Europe and Japan, the most effective geopolitical
counter might well be to try and fashion a triple alliance of its
own, linking China with Iran in the Persian Gulf/Middle East
region and with Russia in the area of the former Soviet Union [and
Eastern Europe].” [6] Brzezinski goes on to say that the
Chinese-Russian-Iranian coalition, which he moreover calls an
“antiestablishmentarian [anti-establishmentarian] coalition,”
could be a potent magnet for other states [e.g., Venezuela]
dissatisfied with the [global] status quo.” [7] Furthermore,
Brzezinski warned in 1997 that “The most immediate task [for the
U.S.] is to make certain that no state or combination of states
gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even
to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role.” [8] It
may be that his warnings were forgotten, because the U.S. has
been repealed from Central Asia and U.S. forces have been evicted
from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.“Velvet Revolutions” Backfire in Central AsiaCentral
Asia was the scene of several British-sponsored and
American-sponsored attempts at regime change. The latter were
characterised by velvet revolutions similar to the Orange Revolution in
Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia. These velvet
revolutions financed by the U.S. failed in Central Asia, aside from
Kyrgyzstan where there had been partial success with the
so-called Tulip Revolution. As a result the U.S. government has
suffered major geo-strategic setbacks in Central Asia. All of
Central Asia’s leaders have distanced themselves from America.
Russia and Iran have also secured energy deals in the region.
America’s efforts, over several decades, to exert a hegemonic role
in Central Asia seem to have been reversed overnight. The U.S.
sponsored velvet revolutions have backfired. Relations between
Uzbekistan and the U.S. were especially hard hit.Uzbekistan
is under the authoritarian rule of President Islam Karamov.
Starting in the second half of the 1990s President Karamov was
enticed into bringing Uzbekistan into the fold of the Anglo-American
alliance and NATO. When there was an attempt on President
Karamov’s life, he suspected the Kremlin because of his independent
policy stance. This is what led Uzbekistan to leave CSTO. But
Islam Karamov, years later, changed his mind as to who was
attempting to get rid of him. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Uzbekistan represented a major obstacle to any renewed Russian
control of Central Asia and was virtually invulnerable to Russian
pressure; this is why it was important to secure Uzbekistan as an
American protectorate in Central Asia. Uzbekistan also has the
largest military force in Central Asia. In 1998, Uzbekistan held war
games with NATO troops in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan was becoming
heavily militarized in the same manner as Georgia was in the
Caucasus. The U.S. gave Uzbekistan huge amounts of financial aid to
challenge the Kremlin in Central Asia and also provided training
to Uzbek forces.With
the launching of the “Global War on Terror,” in 2001, Uzbekistan,
an Anglo-American ally, immediately offered bases and military
facilities to the U.S. in Karshi-Khanabad. The leadership of
Uzbekistan already knew the direction the “Global War on Terror”
would take. To the irritation of the Bush Jr. Administration, the
Uzbek President formulated a policy of self-reliance. The honeymoon
between Uzbekistan and the Anglo-American alliance ended when
Washington D.C. and London contemplated removing Islam Karamov from
power. He was a little too independent for their comfort and
taste. Their attempts at removing the Uzbek President failed,
leading eventually to a shift in geo-political alliances.The
tragic events of Andijan on May 13, 2005 were the breaking point
between Uzbekistan and the Anglo-American alliance. The people of
Andijan were incited into confronting the Uzbek authorities,
which resulted in a heavy security clampdown on the protesters and
a loss of lives. Armed groups were reported to have been
involved. In the U.S., Britain, and the E.U., the media reports
focused narrowly on human rights violations without mentioning the
covert role of the Anglo-American alliance. Uzbekistan held
Britain and the U.S. responsible accusing them of inciting
rebellion.M.
K. Bhadrakumar, the former Indian ambassador to Uzbekistan
(1995-1998), revealed that the Hezbut Tahrir (HT) was one of the
parties blamed for stirring the crowd in Andijan by the Uzbek
government. [9] The group was already destabilizing Uzbekistan and
using violent tactics. The headquarters of this group happens to be
in London and they enjoy the support of the British government.
London is a hub for many similar organizations that further
Anglo-American interests in various countries, including Iran and
Sudan, through destabilization campaigns. Uzbekistan even started
clamping down on foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
because of the tragic events of Andijan. The Anglo-American alliance
had played its cards wrong in Central Asia. Uzbekistan
officially left the GUUAM Group, a NATO-U.S. sponsored
anti-Russian body. GUUAM once again became the GUAM (Georgia,
Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldava) Group on May 24, 2005.On
July 29, 2005 the U.S. military was ordered to leave Uzbekistan
within a six-month period. [10] Literally, the Americans were told
they were no longer welcome in Uzbekistan and Central Asia.
Russia, China, and the SCO added their voices to the demands. The
U.S. cleared its airbase in Uzbekistan by November, 2005.
Uzbekistan rejoined the CSTO alliance on June 26, 2006 and
realigned itself, once again, with Moscow. The Uzbek President
also became a vocal advocate, along with Iran, for pushing the
U.S. totally out of Central Asia. [11] Unlike Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan continued to allow the U.S. to use Manas Air Base, but
with restrictions and in an uncertain atmosphere. The Kyrgyz
government also would make it clear that no U.S. operations could
target Iran from Kyrgyzstan.

The members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO),
an intergovernmental association comprising China, Russia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, will recognize the
organization's fifth anniversary in June 2006 with a much
anticipated celebration, 'Everyone agrees this first jubilee date
must be celebrated accordingly,' said Vitally Vorobyev, Russia's
coordinator in the SCO. Washington, however, will not be joining in
the festivities.

The
reason for Washington's sour mood? Growing anxiety surrounding the
ultimate mission of the SCO and its impact on Central Asia and the
Middle East. Pictures taken by journalists of Russian President
Vladimir Putin during the recent joint Russsian—Chinese Peace Mission 2005
military exercises, showing the president in full military attire
and holding a large model warplane were not reassuring. His
subsequent flight in a supersonic bomber specifically designed to
deliver a nuclear payload did not help either.

This
raises an important question: with SCO leaders such as Russia's
Vladimir Putin, China's Hu Jintao and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
openly embracing military modernization and improved synergies, is
the organization destined to become a military confederacy with
the U.S. as its main target? 'For the SCO to be turned into a
military and political bloc or alliance, the present—day SCO would
need to be dissolved. The legislation of some of the SCO
member—countries makes this [military confederacy] impossible,'
said Vitally Vorobyov. He immediately followed these comments with a
contradictory statement, 'Cooperation between defense agencies
within the SCO framework can and should develop. The SCO makes
provision for this, it's nothing new.'

Statements
of this type from high—level Russian and SCO officials continue
to perplex western intelligence officials, leading some to
speculate that it may be only a matter of time before the SCO
begins to exert its collective military influence in Central Asia
and the Middle East.

Peace Mission 2005

In
August, 'Peace Mission 2005,' a joint eight—day military exercise
involving 10,000 Russian and Chinese troops, was held in Russia's
Far East and China's Shandong Peninsula. The exercises were led by
Russian General Makhmut Gareyev, a veteran of World War II who
fought against both Germany and Japan. Requests by Washington to
reduce the scope of the exercises were rejected by both Russia and
China.

The joint
exercises involved beach landings, airborne assaults, naval
blockades, anti—ship missiles and precision bombing from strategic
bombers. To the surprise of western intelligence officials, Russian
Tu—95MS Bear and Tu—22M3 Backfire strategic bombers designed to
carry nuclear—tipped cruise missiles were deployed during the
exercises. The exercises reportedly involved a mock intervention
to stabilize an imaginary country driven by ethnic strife.

In
response, the U.S. launched a week long 'Joint Air Sea Exercise
2005' in Okinawa and Guam which included 10,000 troops and 100
warplanes from the USS Kitty Hawk strike group. In addition,
the U.S. and South Korea participated in a twelve day 'Ulchi Focus
Lens 2005' military exercise. Taiwan has already announced that it
has scheduled its own invasion defense exercise code named 'Yama
Sakura' for 2006. Taken collectively, the military exercises send a
clear message to Moscow and Beijing that the U.S. is prepared to
respond to any collaborative military threat.

Recent Military Exchanges

In
September, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov announced his
country had agreed to supply China with a total of 40 IL—76
transport and IL—78 refueling planes at a cost of about $1
billion. Later this month, Ivanov is expected to sign contracts to
deliver Russian military vehicles to China. The recent plane
and vehicle sales continue a trend of Russian military hardware
transfers to China which have included: 200 fourth—generation
fighter aircraft, several S—300 air defense batteries, guided
missile destroyers and sophisticated submarines worth a combined
$15 billion over the past ten years. In 2004 alone, Russian arms
exports to China totaled $2.3 billion.

According
to Konstantin Makiyenko, the deputy director of the Center for
Strategic and Technological Analysis, a Moscow—based think tank,
China is also interested in purchasing Russian made A—50 Mainstay
AWACS planes and a manufacturing license for the Su—30MK2
multi—role fighter. Moreover, Beijing has made it clear that wants
to accelerate the purchase of advanced Russian fighters, unmanned
aircraft and long and short—range missiles as part of its ongoing
modernization program.

Not
surprisingly, Russian Defense Minister Ivanov announced this
month that Russian servicemen would travel to China for training
stating, 'Russia needs more experts who can speak Chinese.' More
than 500 Chinese students already study at Russian military
universities. But why the sudden urgency for improved communication
between the two militaries? Washington has begun to take notice
of the evolving relationship. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack commented in August,

'We
would hope that anything that they [China and Russia] do is not
something that would be disruptive to the current atmosphere in the
[Central Asia] region.'

Unfortunately, Mr. McCormack may be disappointed.

Future Military Exercises

Immediately
after the completion of their historic joint military exercises,
Russia and China announced plans to hold additional joint
exercises in 2006. Both countries anticipate expanding the
exercises to include SCO member states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as observer states India,
Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan. 'It is possible by the time we decide
to hold such exercises with China; other SCO countries would be
willing to join, like India,'
one Russian official said. Russian Defense Minister Ivanov
concurred, 'I think that future Russia—China military exercises will
be held and other members of the SCO will probably take part in
them.'

Russia and
India are scheduled to hold their first joint army drill next
month, with mock raids on terrorist facilities taking place in the
Indian province of Rajastahn, on the boarder with Pakistan. Andrei
Kokoshin, a former secretary of the Russian Security Council and a
member of parliament said the impending follow—up to the Peace
Mission 2005 exercises could be part of a Russia—China—India
triangle which supports the increased activity of the SCO. 'The
exercise might focus on maintaining stability in Central Asia and
ensuring the security of oil supplies via sea routes,' Kokoshin
said.

Chinese,
Indian and Russian naval assets working in unison to protect oil
supplies in the Persian Gulf? This comment shows another disturbing
aspect of the emerging confederacy, an increased willingness to use
its combined military strength to secure strategic energy reserves
located in the Middle East. The mere thought of the Persian Gulf
clogged with warships enforcing multilateral allegiances and
interests is enough to make any intelligence analyst stay up all
night. General Yury Baluyevskiy, Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed
Forces, further elaborated on the topic of SCO military
cooperation,

'I
do not rule out that, if a decision is made by the SCO, of which
Russian and China are members, the armed forces of our countries
may be involved in performing certain tasks.'

General Baluyevskiy failed to elaborate on what those 'certain tasks' would include. Observer
country Pakistan is also becoming more active in the military
aspects of the SCO. In September, Chinese General Liang Guanglie, a
member of the Central Military Commission and Chief of Staff of the
People's Liberation Army (PLA), met with Pakistani General Ehsan
Ul Haq, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to strengthen
military—to—military ties. During the meeting in Beijing, the two
generals exchanged views on issues of common global and regional
interest, as well as army building.

The
most troubling development of the past month related to the SCO
is the growing prospect of a nuclear—obsessed Iran joining the
organization as a permanent member. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the newly
elected conservative President of Iran, is a proven U.S. antagonist
and a firm believer in spreading revolutionary Islamist ideology
throughout the Muslim world. His recent comments at the U.N.
concerning the U.S. show a preparation for confrontation with the U.S.
Making matters worse; Iran is planning to build up its military
forces. Iran had planned to double its military budget by 2010, but
thanks to record oil revenues, that timetable has been adjusted
to 2008.

New Thinking Needed

The
SCO is a menacing confederacy of powerful nations arising out of
the shadows of the Cold War that could cause tremendous global
instability and even lead to world war. Geopolitics aside, the SCO has
the potential to become the most powerful alliance on earth,
combining Russia's energy, military and technology expertise; China
and India's economic and human capital; and Iran's enormous energy
resources and growing military capabilities.This unique
combination makes the SCO a formidable adversary for the U.S. In
February, Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) chief of staff
General Liang Guanglie said the Peace Mission 2005 exercises would,
'protect the peace and stability in our region and the world.' The
world? The world has been led to believe that the SCO is a
regional alliance designed to address issues of mutual concern
such as terrorism, separatism and extremism —— whatever they may
mean at the moment for the members of the SCO. With military
operations scheduled for 2006 and an expanded list of
participating nations, the military threat posed by the SCO is
starting to take shape.

At
this time, what steps need to be taken by the U.S. to prepare for a
possible SCO military threat? First, the U.S. Congress,
Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence community must
recognize that the continued military modernization and
integration involving Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Iran will
directly threaten the U.S. and its allies within the next several
years. This is an uncomfortable reality, but one which is taking
shape right before our eyes.

Second,
calls by the SCO and others in the international community for an
immediate withdraw of U.S. troops from the Middle East and
Central Asia should be disregarded, due to the horrific
consequences that the inevitable power vacuum would cause.
Instead, strategic alliances should be strengthened with countries
such as Georgia and the Ukraine to counter any regional threat.

Third,
recent calls by Iran for a Muslim seat on the UN Security Council
should be viewed for what they are; an effort by Tehran to weaken
U.S. legitimacy in the international community and diminish its
influence in Central Asia and the Middle East. Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement that his country will sell
'peaceful' nuclear technology to other Islamic countries is too
chilling to contemplate.

In
short, the SCO is an immature, but potentially dangerous
confederacy of countries with a mutual interest to dethrone the
U.S. and if necessary, confront it militarily. Under the guise of
economic partnership, regional alliances and friendship, China,
Russia and the other members of the SCO are rapidly increasing
their collective power. Recent Pentagon reports identifying China
as a growing threat are indeed accurate, but don't go far enough.

The
reports are deficient in that they base their analysis and
predictions on countries such as China acting unilaterally. As a
result, compulsory discussions concerning the rise of regional and
global alliances that threaten the U.S. are not taking place. This
could be a fatal mistake, since the SCO has become the perfect
vehicle for coordinated military action in the future.

The
most urgent issues for Russia and China, however, have been
Western intervention in Libya, events in Syria, charges of the
West’s hypocrisy concerning Bahrain, and the U.S. determination to
keep a military presence in Iraq, all of which suggest that the
West is determined to maintain a controlling presence in the
Middle East. Closer to home, Moscow fears that Obama is
preparing to reactivate plans to deploy missile defense shields in
Poland and Romania and to establish a long-term military
presence in these two countries.

The
U.S. government suffered a major diplomatic setback in the
Central Asian region when Zalmay Rasoul, the Afghan Foreign
Minister, traveled to Beijing to discuss proposals for tightening
Afghan relations with the Chinese government despite prior
American warnings that it should not do so. Rasoul’s recent four
day trip (May 9-12) was particularly irksome as it came at a time
in which the United States has been particularly active in the
region and because it reflects the growing confidence of China
that it can undermine U.S. ambitions in Central Asia by
establishing diplomatic ties with various neighbors.

Moreover,
the move was so swift and effective that the Americans seem to
have caught on the wrong foot. It has most certainly made U.S.
and NATO efforts to secure a long-term military presence in
Afghanistan and Central Asia more strenuous than they already
were. The primary mover behind such diplomacy has been the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization which has enabled China and
Russia to cooperate more closely in their dealings with the
Central Asia and the Middle East than in any other region. China
has been given a platform to expand interests in the region
without inciting Russian ire and at the same time Russia now has a
means for indirectly but actively participating in Chinese policy.

The
SCO has presented itself to the region as an alternative
provider of security to NATO even as China and Russia publicly
profess interest in supporting Western security efforts in
Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thus, since the SCO already contains
China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
as members and is now cozying up to Afghanistan, it seriously
threatens the USA’s exclusive right to secure military bases in
Afghanistan and other parts of the area. China has other potential
allies in its sights too, one of these being India, which has
made it clear that it prefers to pursue an independent regional
policy rather than simply toe the U.S. line.

Both India
and China share an interest in stabilizing Afghanistan and
Pakistan but neither wants the United States to use either the war
against terrorism or the conflict in Afghanistan to further its
“Great Central Asia” strategy. The SCO provides an ideal
framework for cooperation on regional security issues. Of all the
countries in the region, however, Pakistan is the one whose
confidence in American intentions and ambitions has been most
keenly shaken.

Relations between Islamabad and Washington
have never been easy but they were seriously affected by the
operation to kill Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad. The U.S.
government made it clear that it was willing to act inside
Pakistan’s territory without concern for Pakistan’s sovereignty or
sensitivities. Moreover, Obama has warned Pakistan it would not
hesitate to repeat such an operation and that Pakistani public
opinion takes second place to American security as Washington’s
concerns about Pakistan’s attitude to terrorism seem confirmed.

This
has severely damaged the Pakistan government’s self confidence,
and weakened its faith in Washington’s interest in real
cooperation. It has been embarrassed by the impression it cannot
secure its own territorial integrity. SCO membership would seem to
come at an ideal juncture as Islamabad seeks alternative allies
to help it provide for its own security. The most urgent issues
for Russia and China, however, have been Western intervention in
Libya, events in Syria, charges of the West’s hypocrisy concerning
Bahrain, and the U.S. determination to keep a military presence
in Iraq, all of which suggest that the West is determined to
maintain a controlling presence in the Middle East.

Closer
to home, Moscow fears that Obama is preparing to reactivate plans
to deploy missile defense shields in Poland and Romania and to
establish a long-term military presence in these two countries.
This would challenge Moscow’s traditional hegemony over the Black
Sea. Russia’s efforts to be a part of discussions concerning the
U.S.’s and the European Union’s missile defense program have
failed. All of these developments and the obvious distaste in both
the Middle East and Central Asia for prolonged U.S. and NATO
military presence in the two regions have encouraged all
participants to speed up their diplomatic efforts.

Thus,
while Rasoul was courting Beijing, Pakistani President Zardari was
visiting Russia and Indian Prime Minister Singh was undertaking an
extraordinary two-day visit to Kabul. These shifting power
balances have been provided an ideal shelter, namely the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Dr. Fariborz Saremi
is a commentator on TV and radio (German ARD/NDR TV,SAT 1,N24,
Voice of America and Radio Israel) on Middle East issues and a
contributer to FreePressers.com, WorldTribune.com and
Defense&Foreign Affairs.

Russia and America Clash in the Arctic? Arctic Region. Prime Target of U.S. Expansionist Strategy

The
US and Canada have agreed to put aside their dispute over navigation
rights off the Canadian coast to stand up jointly to Russia. Last
year Nato, for the first time, officially claimed a role in the
Arctic, when Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told
member-states to sort out their differences within the alliance so
that it could move on to set up “military activity in the region.”
“Clearly, the High North is a region that is of strategic interest to
the Alliance,” he said at a Nato seminar in Reykjavik, Iceland, in
January 2009.Since then, Nato has held several major war
games focussing on the Arctic region. In March this year, 14,000 Nato
troops took part in the “Cold Response 2010” military exercise held
in Norway under a patently provocative legend: the alliance came to
the defence of a fictitious small democratic state, Midland, whose
oilfield is claimed by a big undemocratic state, Nordland. In August,
Canada hosted its largest yet drill in the Arctic, Operation Nanook
2010, in which the US and Denmark took part for the first time.Russia
and the United States have made headway in improving their relations
on arms control, Afghanistan and Iran but there is one area where
their “reset” may yet run aground — the Arctic. The US military top
brass warned of a new Cold War in the Arctic and called for stepping
up American military presence in the energy-rich region.Earlier
this month, US Admiral James G Stavridis, supreme Nato commander for
Europe, said global warming and a race for resources could lead to a
conflict in the Arctic because “it has the potential to alter the
geopolitical balance in the Arctic heretofore frozen in time.”
Echoing similar views, Coast Guard Rear Admiral Christopher C.
Colvin, who is in charge of Alaska’s coastline, said Russian shipping
activity in the Arctic Ocean was of particular concern for the US. He
called for more military facilities in the region.The
statements are in line with the US policy. It calls for “deployment
of sea and air systems for strategic sealift, strategic deterrence,
maritime presence, and maritime security” to “preserve the global
mobility of the US military and civilian vessels and aircraft
throughout the Arctic region” including the North Sea Route along
Russia’s Arctic coast, which Moscow regards as its national waterway.
Russia is the prime target of the US expansionist strategy.Two
months ago, the first Russian supertanker sailed from Europe to Asia
along the North Sea route. Next year, Russia plans to send more
ships across the Arctic route, 9,000 km off the traditional route via
the Suez Canal.The US Geological Service believes that the
Arctic contains up to a quarter of the world’s unexplored deposits of
oil and gas. Washington also disputes Moscow’s effort to enlarge its
Exclusive Economic Zone in the Arctic Ocean. Under the 1982 United
Nations Law of the Sea Convention, a coastal state is entitled to a
200-nautical mile EEZ and can claim a further 150 miles if it proves
that the seabed is a continuation of its continental shelf.Russia
was the first to apply for an additional EEZ in 2001 but the UN
Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf asked for harder
scientific evidence to back the claim. Moscow said it would resubmit
its claim in 2013. However, the US has not ratified the UN Convention
as many Congressmen fear it would restrict their Navy’s “global
mobility.”Despite the end of the Cold War, the potential for
conflict in the Arctic has increased recently the scramble of the
five Arctic littoral states — Russia, the US, Canada, Norway and
Denmark (through its control of Greenland) – for chalking out claims
to the energy-rich Arctic as the receding Polar ice makes its
resources more accessible and opens the region to round-the-year
shipping. All claims are overlapping and the five states are locked
in a multitude of other bilateral disputes. But, at the end of the
day, it is Russia against the others, all Nato members.The US
and Canada have agreed to put aside their dispute over navigation
rights off the Canadian coast to stand up jointly to Russia. Last year
Nato, for the first time, officially claimed a role in the Arctic,
when Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told member-states to
sort out their differences within the alliance so that it could move
on to set up “military activity in the region.” “Clearly, the High
North is a region that is of strategic interest to the Alliance,” he
said at a Nato seminar in Reykjavik, Iceland, in January 2009.Since
then, Nato has held several major war games focussing on the Arctic
region. In March this year, 14,000 Nato troops took part in the “Cold
Response 2010” military exercise held in Norway under a patently
provocative legend: the alliance came to the defence of a fictitious
small democratic state, Midland, whose oilfield is claimed by a big
undemocratic state, Nordland. In August, Canada hosted its largest yet
drill in the Arctic, Operation Nanook 2010, in which the US and
Denmark took part for the first time.Russia registered its
firm opposition to the Nato foray, with President Dmitry Medvedev
saying the region would be best without Nato. “Russia is keeping a
close eye on this activity,” he said in September. “The Arctic can
manage fine without Nato.” The western media portrayed the Nato
build-up in the region as a reaction to Russia’s “aggressive”
assertiveness, citing the resumption of Arctic Ocean patrols by
Russian warships and long-range bombers and the planting of a Russian
flag in the North Pole seabed three years ago.It is
conveniently forgotten that the US Navy and Air Force have not
stopped Arctic patrolling for a single day since the end of the Cold
War. Russia, on the other hand, drastically scaled back its presence
in the region after the break-up of the Soviet Union. It cut most of
its Northern Fleet warships, dismantled air defences along its Arctic
coast and saw its other military infrastructure in the region fall
into decay.The Arctic has enormous strategic value for Russia.
Its nuclear submarine fleet is based in the Kola Peninsula. Russia’s
land territory beyond the Arctic Circle is almost the size of India —
3.1 million sq km. It accounts for 80 per cent of the country’s
natural gas production, 60 per cent of oil, and the bulk of rare and
precious metals. By 2030, Russia’s Arctic shelf, which measures 4
million sq km, is expected to yield 30 million tonnes of oil and 130
billion cubic metres of gas. If Russia’s claim for a 350-mile EEZ is
granted, it will add another 1.2 million sq km to its possessions.A
strategy paper Medvedev signed in 2008 said the polar region would
become Russia’s “main strategic resource base” by 2020. Russia has
devised a multivector strategy to achieve this goal. First, it works
to restore its military capability in the region to ward off
potential threats. Russia is building a new class of nuclear
submarines armed with a new long-range missile. Navy Chief Admiral
Vladimir Vysotsky said recently he had also drawn up a plan to deploy
warships in Russia’s Arctic ports to protect polar sea routes.A
second strategy is to try and resolve bilateral disputes with other
Arctic nations. In September, Russia and Norway signed a border pact
settling their 40-year feud over 175,000 sq.km in the Barents Sea and
agreeing to jointly develop seabed oil and gas in the region.Even
as Russia continues to gather geological proof of its territorial
claims in the Arctic, it is ready for compromises. Canadian Foreign
Minister Lawrence Cannon did not rule out, after his recent talks in
Moscow, that Canada and Russia could submit a joint application to the
UN for the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain stretching from
Siberia to Canada, which both countries claim as an extension of their
continental shelves.A third direction of Russia’s policy is
to promote broad international co-operation in the region. Addressing
Russia’s first international Arctic conference in Moscow in
September, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for joint efforts to
protect the fragile ecosystem, attract foreign investment in the
region’s economy and promote clean environment-friendly technologies.
He admitted that the interests of the Arctic countries “indeed
clash,” but said all disputes could be resolved through international
law.

The U.S. Is Developing a Strategic Military Technological Advantage Over Russia

[The
U.S. and the Soviet Union] took on an obligation to support the
processes for the reduction of strategic and conventional arms through
abandoning their defense; that abstaining from developing
anti-ballistic missile defense, pursuant to a 1972 agreement. But
today, the US has withdrawn from this agreement and is developing a
multi-tiered global ABM system. There are elements of this system
in space, they are working on air defense using laser ABM systems
and they are developing the sea-based component. Today we are seeing
a growing ABM presence in the proximity of Russia, including with
on-the-ground clusters, what is being planned in Romania and in
Europe as a whole, etc.

Interview with Leonid Ivashov, President of the Academy on Geopolitical Affairs.This
article, which criticizes the US administration for allegedly
preparing the handover of secret sensitive materials to Russia on
anti-missile defense isn’t really aimed at discussing any issues
related to anti-missile defense. Its first task is to provide support
for the Obama administration in its avoiding of the discussion of
anti-missile defense issues with Russia. On the other hand, it exerts
pressure on Russian proposals for a joint ABM system in Europe, so
that Russia feels public and journalistic pressure in this
respect.The point is that Russia views US strategic AMD as a
threat to its security. Russia considers the signed treaty on the
reduction of strategic nuclear weapons, the START 3, damaging for
its interest insofar as the American side is attempting to attain a
military-technical advantage. This happens because US military
strategic facilities and missile carriers will be protected by US
ABMs, whereas Russian facilities will essentially be exposed and
unprotected. Therefore, if US ABM systems are developed, there can be
no parity in nuclear missile armaments, because one party is
protected and the other is not. This is why Russia made a unilateral
declaration when signing START-3, saying that it may withdraw from
the treaty if the US ABM system upsets the balance of power in the
nuclear missile sphere.In order for this not to happen and
for Russia to remain a part to START-3, and taking into
consideration statements by the US side that the US AMD is not
detrimental to Russia’s security and is not directed at Russia,
Moscow has suggested a joint ABM system in Europe. However, this
does not suit the American side, which is why we’re seeing this
pressure.I think that this article is precisely aimed at
supporting and defending the US position. Turning to criticisms by
the author about the transfer of secret information, I have to say
that after the collapse of the USSR, Russia passed a great deal of
secret information to the US, including on the state of its
missiles, which was stipulated by the previous START agreements.
START-3 also presupposes the sides’ openness as regards their nuclear
potential and so the exchange of information, including telemetric
data. This was a major concession by Russia, to agree to exchange
telemetric specifications on new missiles undergoing testing. So I
don’t think there is any sense in talking about us stealthily
obtaining secret information from the Americans – we have to
exchange information and we do this.We also have to bear in
mind the following argument against framing this issue in terms of
the leak of classified information. Russia today has no plans to
create and develop a national ABM system. And if it did obtain
something in an adjacent technological field, it would not be able
to use it, because it is not creating a system that could utilize
American know-how. So this article does not have a constructive
nature.Perhaps a question that is slightly tangential to
the main topic, but to what extent do today’s ABM systems
correspond to the level of development of modern-day weapons?
Because if I understand it correctly, the US has much more advanced
defense projects than the ABM system.Yes, you have to take
an integrated look at the issue. When agreements on the limitation
and reduction of strategic armaments by US and Russia were being
reached, there were other factors at play, for example, about the
parity of conventional weapons. There was a parity of sorts between
the USSR and the States – in some fields, the US was in the lead,
in other places we were ahead - but all in all, there was parity.
And against a background of the launch of the process for the
reduction of strategic weapons, there was a parallel process for the
restriction of conventional weapons, agreements on the restriction
of such equipment in Europe.There was a third factor: the
sides took on an obligation to support the processes for the
reduction of strategic and conventional arms through abandoning
their defense; that abstaining from developing anti-ballistic
missile defense, pursuant to a 1972 agreement. But today, the US has
withdrawn from this agreement and is developing a multi-tiered
global ABM system. There are elements of this system in space, they
are working on air defense using laser ABM systems and they are
developing the sea-based component. Today we are seeing a growing
ABM presence in the proximity of Russia, including with
on-the-ground clusters, what is being planned in Romania and in
Europe as a whole, etc. So the balance here has been disturbed.As
regards conventional weapons, Russian specialists have thoroughly
considered changes in the US military strategy, when in 2003 the US
administration adopted the Prompt Global Strike concept. This
concept is today being vigorously implemented. It essentially
imparts the substance and significance of strategic weapons onto
conventional high-precision weapons, firstly sea and air-based
cruise missiles. Notably, this class of weapons, that is cruise
missiles, is not restricted by any sort of agreement. These are very
dangerous weapons, that have a strategic range and the highest
precision, and they can carry conventional and nuclear warheads. And
Russia is obviously concerned about this, which is why the Russian
military doctrine contains clauses on the possibility of the
preventative use of tactical nuclear weapons. So this is a very
complex issue. The Americans are not in any way addressing scope for
the restriction of weapons, they are not even discussing possible
restrictions of conventional weapons that have a strategic nature.Russia
is behind on this, so even any limitation of strategic offensive
weapons, which has been agreed upon, is not in an entirely stable
position, given destabilizing factors, first of all ABM systems and
high-precision conventional weapons.

Russia’s military chief warns that heightened risks of conflict near borders may turn nuclear

Russia
is facing a heightened risk of being drawn into conflicts at its
borders that have the potential of turning nuclear, the nation’s
top military officer said Thursday. Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief
of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, cautioned over
NATO’s expansion eastward and warned that the risks for Russia to
be pulled into local conflicts have “risen sharply.” Makarov
added, according to Russian news agencies, that “under certain
conditions local and regional conflicts may develop into a
full-scale war involving nuclear weapons.”

A
steady decline in Russia’s conventional forces has prompted the
Kremlin to rely increasingly on its nuclear deterrent. The
nation’s military doctrine says it may use nuclear weapons to
counter a nuclear attack on Russia or an ally, or a large-scale
conventional attack that threatens Russia’s existence. Russia
sees NATO’s expansion to include former Soviet republics and
ex-members of the Soviet bloc in eastern and central Europe as a
key threat to Russia’s security.

Makarov specifically referred to NATO’s plans to offer membership to Georgia and Ukraine
as potentially threatening Russia’s security. Russia routed
Georgian forces in a brief August 2008 war over a separatist
province of South Ossetia. Moscow later recognized South Ossettia
and another breakaway Georgian province of Abkhazia
as independent states and increased its military presence there.
Russia also considers missile defense plans as another security
challenge.

Russia
has strongly opposed the U.S.-led missile defense plan, saying it
could threaten its nuclear forces and undermine their deterrence
potential. Moscow has agreed to consider NATO’s proposal last
fall to cooperate on the missile shield, but the talks have been
deadlocked over how the system should operate. Russia has
insisted that the system should be run jointly, which NATO has
rejected.

Russia prepares for an adequate response to Tel-Aviv and Washington’s possible strikes against Tehran

The
geopolitical situation unfolding around Syria and Iran is
prompting Russia to make its military structures in the South
Caucasus, on the Caspian, Mediterranean and Black Sea regions more
efficient. Nezavisimaya Gazeta’s (NG) Defense Ministry sources
are saying that the Kremlin has been informed about an upcoming
US-supported Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The
strike will be sudden and take place on “day X” in the near
future. One could assume Iran’s reaction will not be delayed. A
full-scale war is possible, and its consequences could be
unpredictable.

This
problem is currently being addressed as a priority issue at the
EU-Russia summit in Brussels with the participation of President
Dmitry Medvedev. A day before the event, Russia’s envoy to the EU,
Vladimir Chizhov, relayed a message from the Kremlin, saying that an
Israeli or US strike on Iran will lead to “a catastrophic
development of events.” The diplomat stressed that the negative
consequences will not only be felt by the region, “but also in a
much broader context.” Russia’s direct diplomatic pressure on Europe
and the global community in respect to issues concerning a
possible war in Iran began recently after the IAEA’s publication of
a report on the Iranian nuclear program in November.

However,
in the military sphere, Russia’s preparations for minimization
of losses from possible military action against Tehran began more
than two years ago. Today, they are nearly complete. According
to the Defense Ministry sources, the 102nd military base in
Armenia was fully optimized in October-November 2011. Military
personnel’s families have been evacuated to Russia, and the
Russian garrison deployed near Yerevan reduced. Military sub-units
stationed in the area have been transferred to Gyumri district,
closer to the Turkish border. Strikes against Iranian facilities
by US troops are possible from Turkish territory. So far, it is
unclear as to what tasks the 102nd military base will perform in
relation to this. But it is known that Russian troops stationed
at military bases in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, have been on
high alert since December 1 of this year. Meanwhile, ships of the
Black Sea Fleet are located not far from the Georgian border
which in this conflict could act on the side of the anti-Iranian
forces.

In Izberbash,
Dagestan, nearly adjacent to the Azerbaijani border, a coastal
guided missile battalion equipped with onshore anti-ship Bal-E
missile systems with a range of 130 km, have been put on
permanent combat readiness status. All guided missile craft of the
Caspian Flotilla have been redeployed from Astrakhan to
Makhachkala and Kaspiysk districts to form a single group.
Meanwhile, the flagship of the Flotilla, the sentry rocket ship
“Tatarstan”, will soon be joined by the small gunboat "Volgodonsk”
and missile ship “Dagestan”. The flagships of the Flotilla are
equipped with missile systems with a range of up to 200 km.

Recently,
the Northern Fleet’s aircraft carrier group with the heavy
aircraft carrier “Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union
Kuznetsov”, headed towards the Mediterranean with plans to
ultimately enter the Syrian port of Tartus. NG’s sources from the
Defense Ministry did not confirm or deny the fact that the surface
warships are being accompanied by the Northern Fleet’s nuclear
submarines. The tasks that will be carried out by the army and the
navy in the event of a war against Iran are, of course, not being
disclosed. But Russia’s Defense Ministry is apparently concerned
about the logistical support of troops in Armenia. The 102nd
military base is a key point as it is Russia’s outpost in the South
Caucasus. It holds a very important geopolitical position. But
Kremlin officials are worried that this position will be lost. In
the event of a US-Israeli war against Iran, this will indeed be
tragic for Russia.

In
April of this year, Georgia broke the agreement on the transit of
military cargo to Armenia from Russia. Essentially, the
Russian-Armenian grouping in the South Caucasus has been isolated.
Supplies to the Russian army (POL, food, etc.) are delivered only by
air and through direct agreements with Armenia which, in turn,
purchases these products (gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene) from
Iran. A war in Iran will close this supply channel.

Lt.-Gen.
Yury Netkachev, who for a long time served as the deputy
commander of the Group of Russian Forces in the Transcaucasus and
was personally engaged in work on the supply of arms and
ammunition to combined armed forces and units (including the
102nd military base), believes that, in the event of a
full-fledged war against Iran, Russia will be looking to securely
supply the military facility through Georgia. “Perhaps, it will
be necessary to break the Georgian transport blockade and supply
the transport corridors leading to Armenia by military means,”
said the expert.

“Apparently,
Russia’s Defense Ministry is also quite wary of Azerbaijan,
which over the last three years has doubled its military budget
and is currently buying Israeli drones and other advanced means
of reconnaissance and topographic location, naturally aggravating
Tehran and Armenia,” says head of the Center for Military
Forecasting, Anatoly Tsyganok. “Baku has stepped up its pressure
on Moscow, demanding significantly higher rental fees for the
Gabala radar station. But even considering the disputes between
Iran and Azerbaijan over oilfields in the south of the Caspian
Sea, one could hardly argue that Baku will support an
anti-Iranian military campaign. It is also very unlikely that it
will unleash hostilities against Armenia.”

Col.
Vladimir Popov, who was engaged in the analysis of hostilities
between Baku and Yerevan between 1991 and 1993, and is currently
following the military reforms conducted by Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev, disagrees with the expert. Popov believes that “the
negotiation process on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict
has been unreasonably delayed.” Baku is making open statements on
revenge. “Azerbaijan pre-emptive strikes on Armenia and
Nagorno-Karabakh, made in order to finally settle the territorial
dispute in its favor, are possible,” says the expert. But, in his
opinion, the question of how Russia will behave is important.
“If in the midst of a war in Iran, Azerbaijan supported by
Turkey, attacks Armenia, then, of course, all of the adversary’s
attacks against Armenia will be repelled by Russia in conjunction
with Armenian anti-missile defense forces. It’s hard to say
whether or not this will be considered as Moscow’s involvement in
military action. Russian troops will certainly not be engaged in
military action on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. But in the
event of a military threat to Armenia coming from Turkey or
Azerbaijan, for example, Russia will apparently take part in ground
operations,” says Popov.

The
analyst does not exclude the possibility of Russia’s military
involvement in the Iranian conflict. “In the worst-case scenario,
if Tehran is facing complete military defeat after a land
invasion of the US and NATO troops, Russia will provide its
military support – at least on a military-technical level,”
predicts Vladimir Popov.

Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday warned the nation could
pursue actions of "a technically military nature" should its
concerns with a NATO initiative to establish a European missile
shield go unaddressed, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN,
Oct. 31). "If our partners in the future continue to ignore our
position we should protect our interests by other means," Lavrov
said in an interview with the Serbian newspaper Vecernje Novosti.
"Concrete measures might be needed ... a response of a technically
military nature." "We would not wish such a development," he
continued.

Russia says
it fears the NATO missile shield will be secretly aimed at its
long-range nuclear forces. Moscow has said it cannot accept an
agreement on missile defense collaboration with NATO without a legally
binding pledge on the targeting issue. The sides also remain at odds
over the makeup of a potential joint shield -- Russia wants a
combined system in which it and NATO assume responsibility for
eliminating missiles traveling over specific geographical regions,
while the alliance favors two separate but connected operations.

The
two sides have failed to find common ground in nearly a year of
negotiations. Moscow earlier warned it would expand its nuclear
arsenal if it cannot reach agreement with NATO and the United
States, which has already reached agreements for Romania and other
NATO states to host elements of the planned missile shield.

"I
am forced to conclude that the signing of the deal (between
Bucharest and Washington) is an additional link in a chain of events
that shows that the U.S. [is] stepping up their plans to construct
their missile shield without taking into account Russia's concerns,"
Russia's foreign policy chief said (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Nov. 1).

NATO
Parliamentary Assembly President Karl Lamers on Tuesday said the
alliance does not think it necessary to provide a binding pledge as
Moscow has been asked to play a role in the establishment of the
missile shield, Interfax reported. Lamers reaffirmed NATO's stance
that Russia should play a collaborative role in creating the shield
(Interfax, Nov. 1).

Russia’s
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday that the government will
spend over $13 billion in the next three years on revamping the
nation’s aging defense plants. Putin told Friday’s government meeting
that 1,700 weapons factories need to be radically modernized in
what he described as a “colossal work.” Putin said the
government will earmark 400 billion rubles ($13.7 billon or €10.2
billion) for modernization of military industries over the next
three years, adding that the upgrade is essential for fulfilling an
ambitious program of new weapons purchases. “If we want to have
weapons that answer the demands of today’s combat, ... we need to
revamp the military industrial complex,” he said.

Russia
plans to spend the total of 20 trillion rubles (about $620 billion
or €460 billion) on new weapons by 2020. Putin said in Thursday’s
speech to investors that the weapons modernization program doesn’t
mean that Russia wants to engage in militarization, arguing that the
country must replace old Soviet-built weapons that are approaching
the end of their service lifetime.

Russia’s
arms makers have faced harsh government criticism for failing to
meet weapons orders. Analysts blame corruption, aging equipment and
broken links between subcontractors. The pitiful state of Russian
arms industries has been named as the main reason behind a string of
test failures that have dogged the development of Russia’s latest
ballistic missile, the Bulava, which is intended for the latest
generation of Russia’s nuclear submarines. It has remained unclear
when the missile could enter service.

The
development of Russia’s first stealth fighter, intended to match
the latest U.S. design, has also dragged on slowly. The Sukhoi T-50
made its maiden flight in January 2010, about two decades after the
U.S. F-22 Raptor, which it closely resembles. The new Russian
fighter still lacks new engines and state-of-the art equipment, and
its serial production is only expected to begin in 2015 at the most
optimistic forecast.

The
Defense Ministry also has harshly criticized Russian arms makers
for hiking prices and failing to explain reasons behind the
increase. Military officials said that some of the weapons offered
by the nation’s arms industries are a slightly revamped versions of
the old Soviet designs. Facing a crisis of its defense
industries, the Defense Ministry went shopping abroad for weapons.
Earlier this year, Russia has signed a €1 billion contract to buy
two French warships. The country also has bought Israeli drones,
Italian armored vehicles, French military electronics and other gear.

Vladimir
Putin, Russia's prime minister and presumed next president, took a
tough stance against the West, strongly criticizing the U.S.
plans for missile defense, the military campaign in Libya and
Europe's energy policies that he said were seeking to squeeze
Russia out of the European energy market. The remarks at an annual
dinner he has held in recent years with foreign academics and
journalists—his first such encounter since announcing his
candidacy for the presidency in elections in March—suggest his
second spell as president will see no softening of the often-harsh
criticism of Western policies that marked his first period in
office. He and current President Dmitry Medvedev announced in
September that they had agreed that Mr. Putin would run.

Mr.
Putin kept the pressure on the U.S., hinting that Russia would
respond with extra nuclear-missile deployments if the U.S. went ahead
with plans to build a missile defense system that he said
appeared to be designed to neutralize Russia's nuclear deterrent. "We
believe that the establishment of a missile defense system is a
threat to our nuclear potential and we will be compelled to
respond," he said. The U.S. says the system is designed to deal with the threat of attack from Iran. Mr.
Putin accused the U.S. of being interested in relations with
Moscow because Russia was the only country that could destroy the
U.S. in half an hour or less.

"You ask me whether we are going to change. The ball is in your court. Will you change?" he asked Americans present.

Mr. Putin also attacked the role of Western forces in the ouster of Col. Moammar Gadhafi in Libya,
over a dinner that took place at an elegant restaurant at an
equestrian center, about 20 miles west of central Moscow. The menu
included smoked trout, duck liver, venison soup, rhubarb sorbet,
veal cheeks and pear soup with caramel. Mr. Putin described the
actions by the Western allies in Libya as an "outrageous
violation" of a United Nations resolution that had led to what he
called a "tragedy." Mr. Putin said the Western forces were
authorized only to prevent the Libyan air force attacking its own
civilians—and their actions had gone far beyond this and "deceived
the international community."

Speaking
broadly about the region, he expressed concerns that changes in
the Middle East could lead Islamist radicals to come to power.
"Syria is the next in line: What will be the result?" In Egypt and
North Africa, "no one knows who will come to power," he said. He
accused the West of "low-quality politics" in Syria, saying that
Russia no longer had much of an economic stake in that country. "We
think it would be a mistake to disregard what the Syrian
leadership is trying to do with the opposition," he said.

He
also attacked European Union energy policies. "We think we are
being squeezed out of the European energy market," he said. He
criticized new European rules forbidding ownership of pipelines by
gas suppliers, a development that would force Gazprom, the Russian
state-owned gas monopoly, to divest itself of pipeline assets it
owns in the EU. Mr. Putin said Russia would look to supply more gas
toward China and Asia, and said Russia was making giant pipeline
investments to deliver gas to Europe only to have the EU change
the rules of the game after the investments had been made.

He
also made an elaborate criticism of shale gas—extracted using
novel technologies that he said were environmentally disastrous.
Shale gas in the U.S. and elsewhere threatens the markets for
Russia's traditional gas. Mr. Putin held out few prospects of rapid
change in Russia's domestic politics. He promised more "direct
democracy," less centralization and more attacks on corruption, but
didn't say how it would be done.

Richard
Sukwa of the University of Kent in England said he felt Mr. Putin
was still promoting "ideas that have become stale." Clifford Gaddy
of the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, D.C., said
there was "nothing new on the domestic front and he was very
complacent" about the impact on Russia of an economic crisis in
Europe and a fall in oil prices and he was very complacent" about
the impact on Russia of the European crisis.

Russia
may deploy "advanced offensive weapon systems" on its borders
with Europe in response to a planned U.S.-backed European missile
shield, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday. Medvedev's
comment came as he outlined a series of possible “appropriate measures”
if missile defense talks between Moscow and Washington result in
failure. Moscow is seeking written, legal guarantees that the
shield will not be directed against it, but Washington has refused
to put its verbal assurances in writing.

In
a live broadcast on national television, Medvedev said the U.S.
and NATO had failed to "take our concerns about the European missile
defense into account." If there was no progress on the issue, he
went on, Russia would “deploy in the west and the south of the
country advanced offensive weapon systems which will target the
European component of the missile defense network.” Medvedev was
speaking ahead of a NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels on December
7-8.

Other military
measures outlined by Medvedev included the placement of an
early-warning radar in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and the
increased protection of nuclear deterrent assets around the country.
The U.S and NATO plan to place elements of the European missile
shield in Poland and Romania. The Alliance has dismissed Russia’s
concerns over the shield, saying it needs it to deal with “rogue
states” such as Iran.

Russia
and NATO tentatively agreed to cooperate on the European missile
defense network at the Lisbon Summit in November 2010, but
differences in approaches toward the project led to a deadlock in
negotiations. Medvedev reiterated on Wednesday Russia’s proposal to
create a joint missile defense system. He also said, however, that
Russia would not participate in a project that went against its
interests. "We will not agree to take part in a project that may
weaken our deterrent potential in a relatively short time - five or
six or eight years. And the European missile defense is exactly
this kind of project," said Medvedev, who steps down next spring to
allow his mentor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to return to the
Kremlin.

Russia made
similar threats when the George Bush-era missile shield was
announced and there was immediate speculation in at home and abroad
that Medvedev's tough statements were made to satisfy rising
nationalist sentiments ahead of the December 4 parliamentary polls.

ARMS CONTROL AT RISK

Medvedev
also said that if talks on the European missile shield develop in
a manner unfavorable to Russia, Moscow may halt its disarmament
and arms control efforts, including participation in the new
strategic arms reduction treaty with the United States. “Given the
direct link between strategic offensive and defensive weapons,
reasons could emerge for Russia's withdrawal from the START
treaty. This is stipulated by the treaty itself,” he said. The
missile shield dispute between Russia and the United States has
undermined efforts to build on improvements in relations between the
former Cold War foes and is intensified by Russia's uncertainty
over U.S. policy after the November 2012 presidential elections.

Russia
will deploy its own missiles and could withdraw from the New
Start nuclear arms reduction treaty if the United States moves
forward with its plans for a missile-defense system in Europe,
President Dmitri A. Medvedev warned on Wednesday. “I have set the
task to the armed forces to develop measures for disabling
missile-defense data and control systems,” Mr. Medvedev said.

He
said new Russian strategic ballistic missiles “will be equipped
with advanced missile defense penetration systems and new highly
effective warheads” and he reiterated Russia’s warning that it would
deploy tactical missiles to the western territory of Kaliningrad,
which borders Poland. But it was Mr. Medvedev’s comments about
the New Start treaty, put into effect this year,
that suggested a darkening tone in what has been a steady
drumbeat of warnings out of Moscow in recent days over the plans
for a missile-defense system based in Europe.

“In
the case of unfavorable development of the situation, Russia
reserves the right to discontinue further steps in the field of
disarmament and arms control,” Mr. Medvedev said in a televised address
from his residence just outside Moscow. “Given the intrinsic link
between strategic offensive and defensive arms, conditions for our
withdrawal from the New Start treaty could also arise,” he said.

Several
times in his address, Mr. Medvedev reiterated his call for
further negotiations between Russia and the United States, but such
talks seem unlikely to change the strongly held views on each side.
At issue is the Europe-based system being developed by the United
States that it says would defend against a potential missile
attack by Iran. The United States has reached agreements to place
24 interceptor missiles in Romania, as well as a sophisticated
radar system in Turkey.

Russia
believes that that system could be used against its
intercontinental ballistic missiles and has demanded assurance in
writing that this would not be the case. The United States has said it
will not agree to any restrictions on its missile-defense
efforts. Mr. Medvedev raised the issue directly with President
Obama this month at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting
in Hawaii. After those face-to-face talks, Mr. Medvedev said, “Our
positions remain far apart.”

Since
then, he and other Russian officials have made a steady stream of
public statements warning of the consequences of a failure by the
two sides to reach some accommodation. American officials insist
that the Europe-based missile-defense system was intended to
address a threat from Iran — a position that was reiterated by the
White House and the Pentagon after Mr. Medvedev’s televised
remarks on Wednesday.

“In
multiple channels, we have explained to Russian officials that the
missile-defense systems planned for deployment in Europe do not
and cannot threaten Russia’s strategic deterrent, said Tommy
Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
“Implementation of the New Start Treaty
is going well is going well and we see no basis for threats to
withdraw from it. “We continue to believe that cooperation with
Russia on missile defense can enhance the security of the United
States, our allies in Europe, and Russia, and we will continue to
work with Russia to define the parameters of possible
cooperation.”

Mr.
Obama ordered a major redesign of the missile-defense plans he had
inherited from his predecessor, George W. Bush, opting to move the
system closer to Iran and to build it faster. Mr. Bush had favored
placing interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar system in the
Czech Republic. In his remarks, Mr. Medvedev said there was
still room for negotiation. But he accused the United States and
NATO of being unwilling to consider Russia’s point of view. “They
are not going, at least as of today, to take into consideration our
concerns about the architecture of the European missile defense
system,” he said, “They are saying, ‘This is not against you, don’t
worry.’ They are trying to calm us down.”

But
in what was clearly a reference to the United States Congress, Mr.
Medvedev said there were reasons not to trust the assurances from
the Obama administration. “Legislators in some countries openly
state,” he said, “ This is against you.’ ”

The
White House insisted on Wednesday that Washington would not alter
its plans for a European missile defense project, despite
increasingly tough rhetoric from Moscow. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said earlier in the day
that Russia would move "advanced offensive weapon systems" to its
borders with Europe in response to the planned shield, if talks
on the project fail. Moscow is seeking written, legal guarantees
that the shield will not be directed against it, but Washington
has refused to put its verbal assurances in writing.

“The
United States will not alter its plans to deploy a NATO missile
defense system and Russia should not be threatened by the shield,”
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a
statement. “The implementation of the missile system is going well
and we see no basis for threats to withdraw from it.”

Vietor
said the United States had explained to Russian officials through
"multiple channels" that the missile defense systems planned for
deployment in Europe do not threaten Russia's strategic deterrent.
Pentagon spokesman, Capt. John Kirby also reiterated on Wednesday
that the U.S. missile defense system “is focused on addressing the
growing missile threat from Iran.”

"We
have been addressing Russia's concerns through an intensive
dialogue and detailed briefings at senior levels. The U.S. and NATO
have welcomed Russia to participate in missile defense cooperation.
This is the best way for Russia to receive transparency and
assurances that missile defense is not a threat," Kirby told Fox
News. The U.S. Department of State also said it would continue talks
with Russia.

NATO
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a statement he was
"very disappointed" with Medvedev's comments and suggested such a
move would be "reminiscent of the past." "Cooperation, not
confrontation, is the way ahead," Rasmussen added. Russia and NATO
tentatively agreed to cooperate on the European missile defense
network at the Lisbon Summit in November 2010, but differences in approaches toward the project led to a deadlock in negotiations.

The
United States has announced that it will not allow Russian
inspections of U.S. bases or share data with Russia on its nonnuclear
weapons stores in Europe after years of failed efforts to revitalize
a Cold War-era arms treaty. U.S. State Department spokeswoman
Victoria Nuland, who served as the leading U.S. negotiator on the
issue before taking up her current post, announced the decision to
stop meeting its obligations under the Conventional Forces in
Europe (CFE) treaty with respect to Russia."The U.S. has
made a decision to cease implementing vis-a-vis Russia certain
obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty,"
Nuland said. "This move responds to Russia's cessation of
implementation of the CFE, which began in December 2007, and the
subsequent impasse with Moscow on a way forward." She added: "It
is our understanding that a number, if not all, of the NATO allies
will do the same."Observers suggest the impact of the
decision is more symbolic than practical, since other signatories
are likely to forward such information on to Moscow. But it
highlights persistent differences over missile defense and continued
fallout from 2008 hostilities between Russia and neighboring
Georgia that left Russian troops on the soil of a fledgling former
Soviet republic.Failure To RenegotiateFirst
signed in Paris in 1990 by the members of NATO and the former
Warsaw Pact countries, the CFE treaty set equal limits on both sides
for non-nuclear, or conventional, weapons that could be used for
large-scale offensives. Also establishing ceilings for troops as
well as exchanges of information and an inspection regime, the
treaty was seen at the time as key to European security at the end
of the Cold War. Russia sought to renegotiate the CFO treaty in
the late 1990s after a number of former Warsaw Pact nations joined
NATO, rendering the treaty's bloc-based provisions obsolete.An
updated treaty was signed in 1999, but NATO countries refused to
ratify it, insisting that Russia must first withdraw its troops
from Georgia and Moldova's breakaway Transdniester region. The
roadblocks both sides originally faced in trying to reform the
treaty have hung over more recent negotiations as well, said Steven
Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and an expert on arms
control in the former Soviet Union."There was an effort in
2010 to try to see if there was a way to get the regime back into
place or at least come up with principles for restoring a
limitation regime on CFE, and it really foundered over the question
of how to handle Georgia," Pifer said. "From the United States'
side, a key principle of any CFE-type arrangement is that a host
country has a sovereign right to say yes or no to foreign troops on
its territory -- host nation consent. And the problem of course was
how do you deal with South Ossetia and Abkhazia?"'Not Reciprocated'After
the short but bloody Russian-Georgian war in 2008, Moscow
recognized the self-declared independence of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia, both breakaway Georgian territories. Most countries,
including the United States, say the regions remain under Tbilisi.
Scrapped U.S. plans for land-based missile defense structures in
Eastern Europe also hung over the treaty, with former Russian
President Vladimir Putin declaring in 2007 that the treaty limited
his nation's ability to respond to increasing threats. He
suspended Russian participation for all 30 signatory countries.The
State Department's Nuland said that after repeated efforts to
make progress with Russia and the choice to continue to meet its
own treaty requirements along the way, Washington decided that "We
don't think it's in our interest to provide data that's not
reciprocated." She said that the United States had not abandoned
hope for modernizing and reimplementing the treaty with Russia,
saying the decision could "crystallize the mind in terms of our
ability to get back to the table."In practical terms,
Washington will continuing sending weapons data to other treaty
signatories, such as Belarus, which could choose to pass it along to
Russia. With defense budgets dropping across Eurasia and with
most signatory countries -- other than Armenia and Azerbaijan --
maintaining stockpiles well below the treaty limit, the
information is also not considered particularly vital to Russia.
"I think this is mainly a symbolic gesture," said Pifer. "Certainly
there are other countries that may get the information and they
may choose to share it with Russia; and, quite frankly, given its
national technical means, Russia probably has a pretty good fix on
a lot of this information in any case."Pifer said such
information was being provided as a confidence-building measure,
adding that "it's particularly useful for countries other than the
United States and Russia that don't have the sophisticated
satellites and other capabilities that Washington and Moscow have to
track this sort of thing." "So in real terms, is this going to be
a huge impact on Moscow? Probably not. But I think it is designed
to send a signal."'Two To Tango'But in
announcing the toughened U.S. stance, Nuland was also asked whether
the signal is meant to refer to more than just the state of
negotiations on the arms treaty. Washington is also currently at an
impasse with Moscow over the possibility of sharing resources toward a
European missile defense system.While Nuland said the two
are different issues, she suggested that in general, increased
flexibility on Russia’s part would be welcome. "From this point of
view, we don't see a direct connection between the two: missile
defense is missile defense, conventional arms control is
conventional arms control," Nuland said. "We want to have both. We
want to have a good, collaborative relationship with Russia on
both -- but it takes two to tango."Nuland also downplayed
concern that the U.S. move ran counter to the spirit of
"resetting" relations with Moscow. "What we've always said about
the reset is that the reset would enable us to collaborate and
cooperate more where we could, but also to be clear and honest
when we have difficulties and we have differences," Nuland said.
"We thought it was important to be clear now."

Russia
carried out a successful test of a short-range interceptor
missile on Tuesday as a part of its effort to develop a domestic
missile defense shield, the Defense Ministry said. The missile was
launched from the Sary-Shagan (Kazakhstan) shooting range, the
Ministry’s spokesperson said. The goal of the test was to confirm
the technical characteristics of the missile used by the Defense
Ministry’s Space Command.

Russia's Defense Ministry uploaded a video of the missile's launch on its web site. The test comes a month after the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said
that if Moscow's participation in the European missile defense
project fails, Russia would deploy Iskander tactical missiles in the
Kaliningrad Region and halt its disarmament and arms control
efforts, including participation in the new strategic arms
reduction treaty with the United States.

Russia-NATO
missile defense talks are close to deadlock as Moscow is seeking
written, legally binding guarantees that the U.S.-backed European
missile defense program will not be directed against it.
Washington, however, refuses to provide the guarantees, saying the
shield is directed against threats from Iran and North Korea.

Russia
and NATO agreed to cooperate on European missile defense system
at the Lisbon Summit in November 2010. Medvedev proposed a joint
system with full-scale interoperability to ensure that the
alliance's system will not be directed against Moscow. The military
bloc, however, favors two independent systems which exchange
information.

This
new intercontinental ballistic missile, nicknamed "Satan" by
Western analysts, will sport a 100-ton warhead and replace the
Voevoda-class missile in the Russian nuclear arsenal, according to recent news reports.
This massive ICBM will take its place alongside the Yars, Topol-M
and Bulava-class ballistic missiles sometime in 2015, according
to Sergei Karakaev, head of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces.
Development of the new ICBM will coincide with plans to revamp the
country's missile silo complexes over the next decade, Karakaev told
Russian media. Moscow's decision to accelerate work on the new
"Satan"-class ICBM was directly tied to recently failed missile
defense negotiations between Russia and the United States.Russian
president Dimitri Medvedev broke off negotiations with the White
House in November on the administration's plan to set up a missile
shield in Europe. The European Phased Adaptive Approach plan is a
network of sea and land-based missile launchers designed to
counter missile strikes from Iran. Cooperation with Russia is
integral to making the missile shield work. But Moscow claims the
U.S. could not guarantee American missiles would not be used to
take out Russian targets. "Russia does not stand against the U.S.
missile defense system. Russia stands against the creation of the
missile defense system, which would be directly aimed against
Russia," Karakaev said. That impasse forced Medvedev to walk away
from the deal and begin work on its own super nuke.But Washington's unwillingness to hand over classified missile defense secrets
to their Russian counterparts was the real deal breaker between
the former Cold War rivals, according to one key GOP lawmaker. Sen
Mark Kirk told AOL Defense last week that Russia could not be
trusted with America's most sensitive missile defense technologies.
The country's well-established ties with Iran would virtually
guarantee any secrets handed to the Russians would make their way
to Tehran, Kirk said. That kind of cooperation would hand Tehran
exactly what they need to deter the European missile shield,
courtesy of their friends in Moscow.The State Department and
the Pentagon remain committed to bringing the Russians back to the
negotiating table. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen.
Martin Dempsey said the U.S. is determined to find "common ground"
with Russia on the proposed missile shield. Dempsey would not
comment on what proposals American negotiators were offering to
entice Russia back to the negotiating table since those proposals are
constantly in flux. The upside to that, he noted, is that
negotiators on both sides are in "constant contact" to get a deal
done, he said.

Russia
must be able to demonstrate the strength of its ‘iron fist’ clad in
a kid glove of diplomacy in the current complex military and
political situation, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin
said on Sunday. “Our policy must be the policy of an iron fist in a
kid glove. It must turn enemies into partners, partners into
neutrals and neutrals into allies and immediately into friends,”
Rogozin said at the founding congress of the Voluntary Movement in
Support of the Army, Navy and the Defense and Industrial Complex.
Rogozin was recently appointed as a deputy prime minister to oversee
Russia’s defense industry. “No one must have any doubts that under
this layer of the glove, under the glove, there must be an iron
fist, tough and ready to strike any aggressor and a group of
aggressors if they dare to attack Russia,” Rogozin said. Russia’s
state armaments program for the next decade aims to produce 400
ICBMs, eight strategic nuclear submarines, 50 surface warships, 600
combat aircraft and a thousand helicopters, he said.

Russia
and China talked up their burgeoning but still fraught ties
Wednesday, with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin taking a swipe at U.S.
monetary policy as parasitic. On a two-day visit to Beijing, Putin
and Chinese leaders pledged to resolve disputes over pricing that
are stalling plans for Russian deliveries of natural gas by two
pipelines. Chinese state-backed firms also promised to invest $1.5
billion in a Siberian aluminum smelter and to put $1 billion into a
joint investment fund, among agreements officials said were worth
$7 billion.Calling Putin "an old friend of China,"
President Hu Jintao said the Russian leader's visit "moved forward
the Sino-Russian comprehensive strategic relationship." In an
interview with Chinese state media late Tuesday and released
Wednesday, Putin praised cooperation with China and lashed out at
the U.S., describing the dominance of the American dollar as
parasitic. "The U.S. is not a parasite for the world economy, but
the U.S. dollar's monopoly is a parasite," Putin said, according to
a report on the interview from Xinhua, the Chinese government
news agency. Putin said he offered the criticism constructively in
a search for common solutions to ease a roiling world economy.

Putin's
visit commemorated the 10th anniversary of a treaty of
"Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation" between the two former
communist allies, who later came to the brink of war over
ideological differences and territorial disputes. Chinese Foreign
Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin called the visit a "great success" that
charted the way ahead for relations. Putin has frequently tried
to use Russia's burgeoning ties with Beijing as a counterbalance
to U.S. global predominance. And Chinese leaders have reciprocated
the gestures.

The
Beijing trip follows Putin's recent announcement that he plans to
swap jobs next year with President Dmitry Medvedev, returning him
to the top position he held for eight years. Analysts have said
that the change could see Russia tilt further toward China. Last
week, the two countries squelched a U.N. Security Council resolution
condemning Syria for its brutal crackdown on pro-reform
protesters that has killed nearly 3,000 people since March. Their
vetoes drew heavy criticism from Washington.

After
meeting Putin on Tuesday Premier Wen Jiabao told reporters that
China wanted to push ahead a "comprehensive strategic partnership"
with Russia that would safeguard world stability and development.
But even as they reach out to each other, strains are evident
between Moscow and Beijing in the trade and security issues that
have bolstered relations over the past decade. Moscow is unhappy
with China's copying of Russian fighter jets and other military
hardware and recently announced the arrest of a Chinese man
accused of seeking to buy military secrets.

While
trade is booming -- rising, by China's count, to more than 39
percent to $35.9 billion in the first half of the year from the same
period last year -- it's heavily geared toward Chinese purchases
of Russian resources. Moscow wants more Chinese investment in
Russia itself. Wrangling over the price of gas to be delivered by
two Siberian pipelines has gone on for two years and come to
symbolize the difficulties the former Cold War rivals still have
in cooperating. Russia prefers to link gas prices to oil prices,
as it does in Europe, while China wants a lower price. If Russia's
OAO Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp. can reach a deal,
deliveries are to start by 2015.

"Those
who sell always want to sell at a higher price, while those who
buy want to buy at a lower price. We need to reach a compromise
which will satisfy both sides," Putin told reporters Tuesday.

Russia
said it may not let NATO use its territory to supply troops in
Afghanistan if the alliance doesn't seriously consider its objections
to a U.S.-led missile shield for Europe, Russia's ambassador to
NATO said Monday. Russia has stepped up its objections to the
antimissile system in Europe, threatening last week to deploy its
own ballistic missiles on the border of the European Union to
counter the move. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization says the
shield is meant to thwart an attack from a rogue state such as
Iran, that it poses no threat to Russia, and that the alliance will
go ahead with the plan despite Moscow's objections.

If
NATO doesn't give a serious response, "we have to address matters
in relations in other areas," Russian news services reported
Dmitri Rogozin, ambassador to NATO, as saying. He added that
Russia's cooperation on Afghanistan may be an area for review, the
news services reported. Threats to the NATO supply line through
Russia come at an awkward time for the alliance. NATO has become
increasingly reliant on the Russian route as problems in
Pakistan—its primary supply route—have escalated. Over the
weekend, Pakistan closed its border to trucks delivering supplies
in response to coalition airstrikes Saturday that killed 25
Pakistani soldiers.

NATO
began shipping its supplies through Russia in 2009, after the
so-called reset in relations between Moscow and the U.S., allowing the
alliance a safer route for supplies into Afghanistan. But
U.S.-Russian relations have been strained lately by the approach of
elections in both countries. In the past week, the Kremlin has
sharply stepped up its anti-Western rhetoric ahead of parliamentary
elections on Dec. 4. Ivan Safranchuk, deputy director of the
Moscow-based Institute of Contemporary International Studies, said
Russia is unlikely to cut off the flow of NATO supplies to
Afghanistan as an immediate response to missile-defense decisions.
But Russia does want its objections to the missile shield to be
taken more seriously, he said.

"If
the U.S. is not responsive, then a cutoff could be a reality at
some point," Mr. Safranchuk said. "Russia would like the U.S. to be
more serious about Russian concerns."

Russian
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin launched his official presidential
campaign on Sunday, accusing foreign powers of trying to influence
Russia's elections and promising to press ahead with plans to
boost defense spending to safeguard the country's dignity. Mr.
Putin's appearance in a soccer stadium here before 10,000
flag-waving supporters was a clear signal that he planned no
changes to the top-down political system that he has shaped since
assuming the presidency in 2000, despite some weakening of his own
popularity in public-opinion polls.

It
was his first appearance before a large public arena since he was
booed a week ago at a martial-arts competition. He lashed out at
domestic opponents—many of whom have been excluded from the coming
parliamentary and presidential elections—accusing them of playing a
role in the Soviet collapse in 1991 and looting the country
during the ensuing chaos. He praised Russia's neighbors Kazakhstan
and Belarus for helping with his plan to reintegrate former Soviet
states into a "Eurasian Union" whose members would enjoy
exclusive trade ties.

Mr.
Putin, 59 years old, is expected to switch places with his
longtime protégé, President Dmitri Medvedev, after March
presidential elections in what critics and Kremlin officials alike
have called a "castling"—referring to a chess move—of the two
leaders. Elections for the State Duma on Dec. 4 will be a closely
watched precursor to that contest; the Kremlin-controlled party,
United Russia, is expected to win a majority of seats. Kremlin
officials say there are few differences between Messrs. Putin and
Medvedev, and that their switch in roles will bring scant change.
But analysts say the official return of Mr. Putin to the Kremlin
may present difficulties for the West, amid his insistence that
the U.S. and European Union are trying to undermine him.

Mr.
Putin's speech Sunday before the pro-Kremlin United Russia party
was riddled with parallels to a speech he delivered a few months
before Russia's last presidential elections four years ago, where in
the same stadium he promised a revival in Russia's government and
denounced his critics as foreign-financed "jackals." After
accepting the party's formal nomination for president on Sunday,
he told the cheering audience that "some foreign countries are
gathering those they are paying money to—so-called grant
recipients—to instruct them and assign work in order to influence
the election campaign themselves."

He
called the alleged funding a "wasted effort, as we say money
thrown at the wind, firstly because Judas is not the most respected
biblical character in our country." In a clear jab at the
financial troubles in the EU and the U.S., he advised governments
that "it would be better to pay off their debt with this money and
stop pursuing inefficient and costly economic policies."

Mr.
Putin, who was initially installed in the Kremlin after the
resignation of Boris Yeltsin 12 years ago, said he believed that only
his government had the experience to take Russia into a better,
more prosperous future. His critics, he said, had already
discredited themselves with their own efforts to run the country
and "ran it to complete collapse—I mean the collapse of the Soviet
Union—while others went on to degrade the government and organize
the unprecedented looting of the 1990s" in Russia.

"They
destroyed industry, agriculture and the social sphere," he said,
and "thrust the knife of civil war into Russia's very heart,"
referring to the two wars the Kremlin fought against Chechen
separatists. Because he stepped down from the presidency for the
past three years, Mr. Putin now is eligible for two more six-year
terms in office, and so could become the longest-serving Kremlin
leader since Joseph Stalin.Mr. Medvedev, who introduced Mr. Putin at
the party meeting Sunday, said "there is no more successful,
experienced or popular politician in Russia" and that in nominating
him for president "we have officially determined our political
future not just for the short term but for the long term."

Another
high-level member of Mr. Putin's circle, Finance Minister Alexei
Kudrin, resigned from the government in September after the
so-called castling of leaders was announced. People close to Mr.
Kudrin said he was disappointed that he wasn't offered the prime
minister's job; Mr. Kudrin also said he was against a planned boost
in military spending after elections. Mr. Putin said on
Sunday that he did plan such a boost and that "in the next five to
ten years, we have to bring a new level and our armed forces to a
new level." "Of course it will be expensive," said Mr. Putin. "But
we must do this if we want to protect the dignity of the country."

Russian
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. authorities on
Thursday of sponsoring the opposition in Russia and urged harsher
punishments for those acting on orders from “foreign states.” His
remarks followed comments by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
and other senior Washington officials about the outcome of Russia’s
parliamentary elections, in which the pro-Kremlin United Russia
party gained almost half of the vote. The White House said it had
“serious concerns” about the polls, which were marred by
accusations of ballot-stuffing and other irregularities, with
Clinton describing the vote as neither free nor fair.

“I
looked at the first reaction of our U.S. colleagues,” Putin said
during a meeting with representatives of his All-Russia People’s
Front movement in Moscow. “The [U.S.] secretary of state was quick
to evaluate the elections, saying that they are unfair and unjust,
even before she received materials from the Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) observers.”

President
Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday's polls were democratic and fair,
despite numerous violations registered by international observers,
which he said would be investigated. Clinton’s comments, Putin said,
became a “signal” for “our activists, who began active work with
the support of the U.S. Department of State.” Massive opposition
protests against the alleged vote fraud in favor of United Russia
took place in Moscow and St. Petersburg following Sunday's
elections. Several thousand protesters participated in marches in
downtown Moscow on Monday and Tuesday and another major protest is
expected to be held on Saturday near the Kremlin’s walls.

“We
are not against foreign observers monitoring out election
process,” Putin said. “But when they begin motivating some
organizations inside the country which claim to be domestic but in
fact are funded from abroad… this is unacceptable.”

His
remarks seemed to be an apparent reference to the Moscow-based
Golos election watchdog, which has faced pressure from the
authorities ahead of the polls amid reports of its funding by U.S.
government-affiliated structures. Punishment for those cooperating
with foreign governments should be toughened, Putin said. “We will
have to think about improving our laws in order to make those
fulfilling the tasks of a foreign state aimed at influencing our
domestic [political] process more responsible,” he said.

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney made his first major foreign policy speech Friday
at The Citadel, a military college in the important primary state
of South Carolina. Full of pomp and belligerence, he called for a
century of American dominance. This century must be an American
century. In an American century, America has the strongest economy
and the strongest military in the world,” Romney said. “God did not
create this country to be a nation of followers. America is not
destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers. America
must lead the world, or someone else will.”

Romney
condemned what he called an isolationist tendency from the tea
party conservatives and other Republicans that dare dissent from the
pro-war ideology of the party. “This is America’s moment. We should
embrace the challenge, not shrink from it, not crawl into an
isolationist shell, not wave the white flag of surrender, nor give in
to those who assert America’s moment has passed. That is utter
nonsense,” he proclaimed.

He
appealed more to vague sentiments and perceptions of complaisance
on the international stage than to actual changes in policy. After
all, it is difficult to present a starkly different option than
Obama, who has followed essentially the same foreign policy as the
most militaristic Republican president in recent memory, George W.
Bush.

Chinese
President Hu Jintao's just-concluded visit to Russia is the
latest in a decade-long effort that has established a new era of
cooperation between the two neighboring world powers. The state
visit, from June 15 to 18, is his fifth since 2003, and continues a
process of closer ties between the two countries at all levels
since they signed the landmark China-Russia Treaty of
Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation in July 2001. Over
the past decade, bilateral cooperation has borne rich fruit in many
fields, fostering peace and prosperity in the two countries and
for the world at large. Hu's latest visit, on the 10th anniversary
of the treaty, is believed to further promote bilateral
cooperation and charter a course for future development of
bilateral ties.

Mutual political trust

The
25-article good-neighborly treaty stresses a new type of
state-to-state relationship, which neither seeks alliance,
confrontation nor targets against any third country. Recalling the
treaty, President Hu said Thursday the new security concept it contains
served as an excellent example of a new type of bilateral
relations. "The treaty is an important landmark in the development
of China-Russia relations. At the same time, it has blazed a trail
in international relations," he said. Over the past decade, China
and Russia have made eye-catching progress in boosting their
political trust. Frequent high-level exchanges have demonstrated
the steady and healthy development of bilateral relations.

In
addition to his five state visits, Hu headed to Russia in 2005
and 2010 for the 60th and 65th anniversaries of Victory in the
Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Last year alone, Hu and Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev held six bilateral meetings and reached
important agreements on further deepening the bilateral strategic
partnership of cooperation. In 2004, China and Russia inked an
additional treaty over their eastern border, putting an end to 40
years of negotiations and making their 4,300-km-long border a
symbol of good-neighborly relations and harmonious coexistence.
The two sides have also established mechanisms for regular
meetings between their leaders and cooperation mechanisms between
various government departments, and signed more than 200
cooperative documents to help improve the mechanisms and legal
basis of bilateral ties.

Chinese
Ambassador to Russia Li Hui, in a recent interview with Xinhua,
said China-Russia ties were becoming a model for bilateral
relations of the world's big powers. Mikhail Titarenko, head of the
Far East Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told
Xinhua Hu was a longtime close friend of Russia, and his visit
definitely would encourage more joint efforts in both political
issues and economic projects. "The prospects for Russian-Chinese
cooperation are really great," Titarenko said.

Pragmatic cooperation

Economically,
cooperation has benefited both sides. Two-way trade has increased
sevenfold from some $8 billion in 2000 to nearly $60 billion in
2010. Hu, during a meeting with Medvedev Thursday, said the two
sides should work to further boost bilateral trade and set targets
of 100 billion dollars a year by 2015 and 200 billion by 2020.
Medvedev, for his part, said the Russian side was fully satisfied
with the development of bilateral relations over the past decade.
He specifically hailed the rapid development in bilateral economic
and trade cooperation. The two sides have carried out a number of
large-scale cooperative projects in areas such as energy,
infrastructure, and science and technology.

These
include a China-Russia oil pipeline project linking Russia's Far
East and northeast China, which began operation on January 1. It
runs smoothly and had delivered more than 6 million tons of crude
oil from Russia to China by the end of May. The 1,000-km-long
pipeline will transport 15 million tons of oil annually from Russia
to China from 2011 to 2030. The two countries are now negotiating
another two long-term gas projects. The projects, with a "west
line" capable of supplying China with 30 billion cubic meters of
natural gas a year and an "east line" of 38 billion cubic meters,
would both be 30-year deals.

Culturally,
China and Russia have actively learned about each other and
deepened the friendship between the two peoples. China hosted the
"Year of Russia" in 2006 and "Year of Russian Language" in 2009,
while Russia held the "Year of China" in 2007 and "Year of Chinese
Language" in 2010. These activities increased the two peoples'
understanding of each other. People-to-people exchanges have
witnessed robust development, with more than 3 million Chinese and
Russians currently visiting each other's country every year. China
and Russia are also to stage s "Year of Tourism" to deepen
bilateral exchanges.

Influential duet on world stage

China,
as Asia's biggest country, has a land area of 9.6 million square
km and a 1.34-billion population, while Russia is the biggest
country in Euroasia, with a formidable 17 million square km and a
population of 142 million. Their friendly cooperation, without
doubt, is of vital importance for peace and prosperity both in
Eurasia and beyond. China and Russia, both of which are UN Security
Council permanent members, are heavyweights on the world platform
and have cooperated effectively at the UN. The two countries have
maintained similar stances and substantially supported each other
on a variety of hot and thorny international issues.

They
also have cooperated effectively in other regional or
international frameworks, such as the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO), BRICS and the Group of 20. "These new
organizations will help Russia and China, together with other
countries, maintain stable development, not only of our own
countries, but also of the whole mankind," Igor Rogachev, a member
of the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, and
a former ambassador to China, told Xinhua. Moreover, Russia has
firmly adhered to the one-China policy and recognized Taiwan as an
inalienable part of China, while China has staunchly supported
Russia's crackdown on Chechen separatists.

China-Russia
cooperation is tremendously conducive to building a multipolar
world and a fairer international order, and benefits world peace and
stability. Alexander Lukin, director of the Center for East Asia
and SCO Studies at Moscow State University for International
Relations, wrote in an article titled "Russia and Rising China" that,
"both Russia and China are unwilling to see the world as
dominated by a super power. Instead, they think the world should
have many poles, which will cooperate with each other according to
international laws and under the guidance of the UN Charter."
"They also dislike other countries bossing them around over their
domestic policies, and deem the actions as intervention in their
internal affairs," he said.

On
Thursday, China and Russia issued a joint statement on a broad
range of key international issues. They expressed their common
stances on a variety of international issues, including bilateral
cooperation at the UN and the G20, global nuclear and security
issues, Asia-Pacific regional cooperation, the Korean Peninsula and
Iranian nuclear issues, and unrest in West Asia and North Africa.
They vowed to make concerted efforts to effectively cope with
various global challenges and threats.

Common Challenges

The
two neighbors now are also confronted with a variety of similar
daunting challenges, such as a widening wealth gap, corruption,
poverty, unemployment, and environmental pollution, among others.
Some Western countries are skeptical of the two emerging powers'
intentions, employing labels such as "China Threat Theory, "
"Russian Authoritarianism" and other appalling rhetoric. They have
even attempted to deter their development. Therefore, bilateral
cooperation is of significant importance to the two neighbors for
their sustainable development, for which stable external
circumstances are crucial as they push forward their modernization
drives.

During
his meeting with Medvedev Thursday, Hu said the next decade would
be a critical period for the two countries for their respective
development and for deepening their partnership. He said China was
ready to work with Russia to develop a comprehensive strategic
cooperative partnership featuring equality, mutual trust, mutual
support, common prosperity and lasting friendship in the new decade.

Hu
also stressed China would unswervingly pursue the road of
peaceful development and work for the establishment of a
harmonious world of long-term peace and common prosperity. Rogachev
said, "We have taken an important step forward in strengthening
the principle of 'Russia and China are friends forever and will
never become enemies'." Leaders and peoples of the two countries
have agreed to follow this positive practice and find new themes
for cooperation, he said.

China's
navy should speed up its development and prepare for warfare,
President Hu Jintao has said. He told military personnel they
should "make extended preparations for warfare". China is locked
in territorial disputes with several other nations in the South
China Sea. Political tension is also growing with the US, which
is seeking to boost its presence in the region.

After
Mr Hu's comments, the US said China was entitled to defend
itself. "Nobody's looking for a scrap here," said Pentagon
spokesman Admiral John Kirby in quotes carried by the AFP news
agency. "Certainly we wouldn't begrudge any other nation the
opportunity to develop naval forces." Senior US and Chinese
officials are currently holding talks on military issues. The
one-day meeting takes place every year, with the stated aim of
ensuring there are no misunderstandings between the two nations.

'Sovereignty dispute'

China
has recently acquired its first aircraft carrier and has been
vocal about its naval ambitions. But its military remains primarily
a land-based force, and its naval capabilities are still
dwarfed by the US. Mr Hu told a meeting of military officials
that the navy should "accelerate its transformation and
modernisation in a sturdy way, and make extended preparations
for warfare in order to make greater contributions to safeguard
national security". The word "warfare" was used in official
media, but other translations used "military combat" and
"military struggle".

Analysts
say Mr Hu's comments are unusually blunt, and are likely to be
aimed at the US and Beijing's rivals in the South China Sea.
Both the Philippines and Vietnam have repeatedly accused China of
overt aggression in the region. They are among the nations
claiming sovereignty over islands in the sea in the hope that
there could be oil and gas deposits there. And US President
Barack Obama announced last month that the US was boosting its
presence in the region, and will base a full Marine task force in
northern Australia.

Analysts
say the US move is a direct challenge to China's attempts to
dominate the area, and is likely to bolster US allies in the South
China Sea dispute.

President
Dmitry Medvedev has appointed Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s envoy to
NATO since 2008, deputy prime minister in charge of the defense
complex. “I believe you have enough experience to manage this difficult area,” RIA Novosti quotes Medvedev as saying. “You have gained it in recent years working as my permanent representative in NATO.”

The
president added that the defense complex would acquire a “strong
modern manager.” Dmitry Rogozin outlined specific measures he
would take to renew it, and pledged to curb corruption “with an
iron hand.” One of Rogozin’s first tasks in his new post will be
the settling of the uneasy relations between weapons producers and
the Defense Ministry, experts suggest. This year has seen a
long-standing argument on prices between the two sides. The Defense
Ministry insisted they were inflated, while manufacturers
insisted they were offering a fair deal for the weaponry. The
conflict was only solved with the mediation of Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin.

The
appointment of Dmitry Rogozin sends a signal to the West that
Russia will be taking a tough stance, first of all on the planned
European AMD, says the head of the Moscow-based Agency for Political
and Economic Communication, Dmitry Orlov. “It’s a clear-cut
signal to Western elites… meaning that Russia’s position on AMD,
re-armament and the defense issue of the foreign policy is
consistent and harsh,” Orlov commented. As Russia’s envoy to
NATO, Rogozin has repeatedly said that Moscow needs to maintain its
strategic defense potential in response to the newly-introduced US
missile defense system.

Russia
sought to undermine the authority of the United States as a global
judge of human rights on Wednesday with Moscow's first report to
detail allegations of torture, phone tapping and abuse by the U.S.
government. Criticizing
the United States for double standards, Russia said President
Barack Obama had failed to shut the military prison at Guantanamo
Bay and accused the White House of sheltering officials and CIA
operatives from prosecution.The
Foreign Ministry's report "On the situation with human rights in a
host of world states," follows China's example in highlighting
U.S. failings in an attempt to counter U.S. State Department
criticism of domestic human rights abuses."The
situation in the United States is far from the ideals proclaimed
by Washington," Russia's foreign ministry said in a 63-page report
posted on its www.mid.ru Web site. "The main unresolved problem is
the odious prison in Guantanamo Bay." "The White House and the
Justice Department shelter from prosecution CIA operatives and highly
placed officials who are responsible for mass and flagrant
breaches of human rights," it said.Every
year since 1976, the U.S. Department of State has published a
detailed report on the state of human rights in the world, often with
scathing analyses of abuses in China
and Russia. Washington scolded Russia for "governmental and
societal human rights problems and abuses during the year" in its
report published in April. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
angered Prime Minister Vladimir Putin this month by suggesting that
Russia's parliamentary elections were neither free nor fair.Russia's
counter-report is unlikely to harm ties with its former Cold War
foe, though Obama's attempt to forge more friendly ties with the
Kremlin has cooled since Vladimir Putin said in September he planned
to run in the March presidential election. "These kinds of human
rights reports can be a useful mechanism," State Department spokesman
Mark Toner said. "We certainly don't regard it as interference in
our internal affairs when foreign governments, individuals or
organizations comment on or criticize U.S. human rights practices."Russia
also criticized European Union countries for the treatment of
religious minorities and Britain in particular for breaching human
rights in the wake of August's riots. The report focused on the United
States and European countries, mentioning China only once and then
in passing.

Russian
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has a vision for a Soviet Union-lite
he hopes will become a new Moscow-led global powerhouse. But, his
planned Eurasian Union won't be grounded in ideology: This time
it's about trade. The concept of regional economic integration may
be losing some of its allure in Europe, where a debt crisis is
threatening the existence of the eurozone. But some countries across
the former Soviet Union, still struggling economically 20 years
after becoming independent, are embracing Putin's grand ambition.

Russia
has moved one step toward this goal under an agreement with former
fellow Soviet republics Belarus and Kazakhstan that as of Sunday
allows the free movement of goods and capital across their common
borders. As Putin envisions it, the still-hypothetical union will
eventually stretch from the eastern fringes of Central Europe to the
Pacific Coast and south to the rugged Pamir Mountains abutting
Afghanistan.

The
drive to somehow reform at least a husk of the Soviet Union has
been around since 1991. The Commonwealth of Independent States,
which loosely brings together 11 of the original 15 republics, was
an early attempt that never amounted to much more than a glorified
alumni club. It was Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev who
first raised the notion of an Eurasian Union in the early 1990s,
but the idea was too premature for nations busy forging their own
delicate statehoods.

Putin
was president from 2000 to 2008 and intends to regain that
position in a March election. A wave of protests that began after a
fraud-tainted parliamentary election in December is posing the first
serious challenge to Putin's authority, but his hold on power
still seems secure.
In anticipation of a new six-year term as president, Putin has made
forming a Eurasian Union by 2015 a foreign policy priority. He is
promoting the union as necessary for Russia and its neighbors to
compete in the modern global economy. His broader goal is to
restore some of Moscow's economic and political clout across former
Soviet space and thus strengthen Russia's position in the world.

If
the poorer prospective members are clamoring for Putin's union so as
to become Moscow's financial beneficiaries, as was the case under
the Soviet Union, they may be sorely disappointed. Russia has in
recent years taken a more pragmatic line when extending its largesse
and that stance is expected to remain largely unchanged. "Some
years ago, Russia came to the position that assistance to former
Soviet republics should be monetized," said Ivan Safranchuk, an
associate professor at the Moscow State Institute of International
Relations.

Safranchuk
said this meant that Moscow issued lines of credit and then sold
countries oil, gas, electricity and military hardware at discount
prices. That strategy has brought Russia closer to gaining control over
energy infrastructure in Ukraine, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. While
giving Moscow economic leverage over its former subjects, this
approach has precluded the exorbitant spending pressure that helped
bankrupt the Soviet Union.

The
agreement to form a "common economic space" that went into effect
Jan. 1 gives Russia up to 30 million new customers in Belarus and
Kazakhstan, while these countries gain greater access to Russia's
market of more than 140 million people. The risk to Russian
manufacturers is the relatively lower cost of production in the
other two countries, which could potentially drive them out of
business.

Kyrgyzstan
and Tajikistan, both economically struggling nations in Central
Asia, may be the next to join the free trade club. Kyrgyzstan's
former President Roza Otunbayeva said before stepping down in late
October that she saw her nation's fate as inevitably linked with the
Eurasian Union. "The natural flow of the work force, services and
movement of capital is of course all directed to Russia and
Kazakhstan," she said.

Current
President Almazbek Atambayev has made it clear he sees the fate of
Kyrgyzstan, which hosts a U.S. air base that acts as a crucial
transportation hub for military operations in Afghanistan, as very much
tied to Russia.
Neighboring Tajikistan, whose long and porous border with
Afghanistan keeps many a security analyst awake at night, has
proven a more recalcitrant partner and was recently embroiled in an
unseemly diplomatic spat with Russia. But with more than an
estimated 1 million Tajik migrants currently working in Russia, the
lure of a border-free future could be too compelling to refuse.

Other
potential members of the Eurasian Union in the Kremlin's sights
appear more wary about what this means for their sovereignty. Ukraine,
which has flirted uncertainly with membership, fears it could
further jeopardize its future economic and political engagement with
Western Europe. Others, such as Armenia, have proven positively
cool on the idea, while Georgia under President Mikheil Saakashvili
will likely always be hostile to anything coming out of Moscow.

Dmitry
Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, cautioned against
talking up the prospect of the Eurasian Union as a political
project. "I see no absolutely no wish on behalf of the Kazakhstani
leadership to give up their sovereignty, and I see the Belarusian
people not wishing to become part of Russia," he said.
Still, Russia's neighbors may have reason to fear Kremlin attempts
to restore political domination. Shortly after Putin came to power,
the Foreign Ministry spelled out Russia's strategic vision in no
uncertain terms. The document, which dates back to 2000, argues for
promoting policies that "best serve the interests of Russia as a
great power and as one of the most influential centers in the modern
world."

The
theme was recently reprised in campaign literature for Putin's
United Russia party, which claimed that the "new union will allow our
country to become another pole of influence in the modern,
multipolar world." Trenin said that so far the fears of renewed
Kremlin domination were ungrounded, noting that Kazakhstan and
Belarus only increase the reach of Russia's markets by one-fifth in
terms of population. "That's fine, but it doesn't make you a
powerhouse," he said.

One
might be tempted to regard Russian premier V. Putin's paper “A new
integration project for Eurasia: The future in the making”,
which saw the light of day in Izvestia on October 3, 2011, as the
presidential front-runner's sketchily laid out program, but upon
scrutiny that appears to be only one part of a wider picture. The
opinion piece momentarily ignited wide-scale controversy in and
outside of Russia and highlighted the ongoing clash of positions
on global development…

Regardless
of interpretation details, the reaction of the Western media to
the integration project unveiled by the Russian premier was
uniformly negative and reflected with utmost clarity an a priori
hostility towards Russia and any initiatives it floats. Mao
Zedong, though, used to say that facing pressure from your
enemies is better than being in such a condition that they do not
bother to keep you under pressure. It helps to
understand why, at the moment, Cold War-style headlines are
constantly popping up in Western media and what perceived threat
the West discerned in Putin's recent Eurasian integration. The
obvious explanation is that, if implemented, the plan would come
as a geopolitical challenge to the new world order, to the
dominance of NATO, the IMF, the EU and other supranational
bodies, and to the undisguised US primacy.

Today's
increasingly assertive Russia suggests and is ready to start
building an inclusive alliance based on principles providing a
viable alternative to Atlantism and neoliberalism. It is an open
secret that these days the West is putting into practice an array
of far-reaching geopolitical projects, reconfiguring Europe in
the wake of the Balkan conflicts and against the backdrop of the
crises provoked in Greece and Cyprus, assembling the Greater
Middle East based on serial regime changes across the Arab world,
and, as a relatively novel design, implementing the Asia project
in which the recent disaster in Japan was an active phase.

In
2011, the intensity of geopolitical dynamics was unprecedented since
the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc, with all major
countries and international bodies contributing. Moreover, the
current impression is that military might somehow became a
legitimate instrument in international politics. Just days ago,
Moscow drew avalanche criticism after vetoing the UN Security
Council resolution which could authorize a replay of the Libyan
scenario in Syria. As a result, US permanent envoy to the UN S.
Rice slammed Russia and China over the veto, while French
foreign minister Alain Juppé declared that “it is a sad day for
the Syrian people. It is a sad day for the Security Council”.
During the heated UN security Council debates on September 5,
Syrian representative lambasted Germany and France, and charged
the US with perpetrating genocide in the Middle East. After that,
S. Rice accused Russia and China of hoping to sell arms to the
Syrian regime instead of standing by the Syrian people and stormed
out of the meeting, and French envoy Gérard Araud opined
that “No veto can clear of their responsibility these Syrian
authorities that have lost any legitimacy by murdering its own
people”, leaving an impression that murdering people, as in
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, should be a NATO
privilege.

Moscow's
Western “partners” are outraged whenever Russia, in concert
with China, puts obstacles in the way of the new world order.
Syria, albeit a regionally important country, only fleetingly
tops the agenda, but Putin's ambitious plan for the whole
Eurasia - “reaching a higher level of integration – a Eurasian Union”
- had to be expected to evoke deep and lasting concerns in the
West. Moscow openly challenges the West's global dominance by
“suggesting a model of a powerful supranational union that can
become one of the poles of today's world while being an efficient
connecting link between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific
Region”.

No doubt, Putin's messages that “the combination
of natural resources, capital, and strong human potential will
make the Eurasian Union competitive in the industrial and
technological race and the race for investor money, new jobs, and
advanced production facilities” and that “along with other key
players and regional institutions such as the EU, the USA,
China, and APEC, it will ensure the sustainability of global
development” sounded alarming to Western leaders.

Neither
the collapse of the USSR and the bipolar world nor the
subsequent proliferation of pro-Western “democracies” marked a
final point in the struggle over global primacy. What followed
was an era of military interventions and displacements of defiant
regimes with the help of information warfare and the omnipresent
Western soft power. In this game, Eurasia remains the main
prize in line with John Mackinder's geopolitical imperative by
which “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules
the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the
World-Island controls the world”.

In
the late XX century the US became the first-ever non-Eurasian
country to combine the roles of the world's top power and the
final arbiter in Eurasian affairs. In the framework of the new
world order doctrine, the US and the West as a whole see Eurasia
as a zone of key importance to their economic development and
growing political might. Global dominance is an openly stated
and constantly pursued goal of the Euro-Atlantic community and
its military and financial institutions – NATO, the IMF, and the
World Bank - along with the Western media and countless NGOs.
In the process, the Western establishment remains fully aware
that, in Z. Brzeziński's words, „America's global primacy is
directly dependent on how long and how effectively its
preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained”. Sustaining the “preponderance”, in turn, takes control over Europe, Russia, China, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

Untamed
Western hegemony in Europe, Central Asia, and, to an extent, in
the Middle East and even Russia used to count as an
unquestionable outcome of the past couple of decades, but at the
moment the situation appears fluid. Western, Chinese, and
Russian watchers alike are predicting an imminent failure of the
neoliberal globalization model embedded in the new world order,
and the time is coming for the political class to adopt the
view.

By
opening up opportunities to shield original models of national
development from Atlantist pressure and to maintain real
international security, Putin's new integration project holds a major
promise for Russia and its allies, and thereby presents
Russia's foes with a serious problem. Neither Russia nor any
other post-Soviet republic can survive in today's world
single-handedly, and Russia as Eurasia's key geopolitical player
with economic, political, and military potentials unparalleled
across the post-Soviet space can and should stake a bid for an
alternative global architecture.

The
West's allergy to Putin's plan is therefore explainable, but,
regardless of the opposition the project is bound to run into, of
the weakness of some of its elements, and of the potential
difficulty of putting it into practice, the Eurasian integration
project grew out of the life of the post-Soviet geopolitical and
cultural space and is consonant with current global trends.
Surviving, preserving the economic and material foundations of
national existence, keeping traditions alive, and building a
secure future for the children are the objectives the Eurasian
nations can accomplish only if they stay aligned with Russia.
Otherwise, isolation, sanctions, and military interventions
awaits them…

In
one of the most blacked-out stories in America right now, the US
military is preparing to send thousands of US troops, along with US
Naval anti-missile ships and accompanying support personnel, to
Israel. It took forever to find a second source for confirmation of
this story and both relatively mainstream media outlets are in
Israel. With one source saying the military deployment and
corresponding exercises are to occur in January, the source
providing most of the details suggests it will occur later this
spring.

Calling it not just an “exercise”, but a “deployment”, the Jerusalem Post
quotes US Lt.-Gen Frank Gorenc, Commander of the US Third Air
Force based in Germany. The US Commander visited Israel two weeks
ago to confirm details for “the deployment of several thousand
American soldiers to Israel.” In an effort to respond to recent
Iranian threats and counter-threats, Israel announced the largest
ever missile defense exercise in its history. Now, it’s reported
that the US military, including the US Navy, will be stationed
throughout Israel, also taking part.

Also confirming the upcoming US-Israeli military missile exercises is JTA.org
- 'global news service of the Jewish people'. In their account,
they report, 'Last week, plans for Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman
of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, to visit Israel in January
were leaked to Israeli media; his visit likely will coincide with
the largest-ever joint U.S.-Israel anti-missile exercise'.

While
American troops will be stationed in Israel for an unspecified
amount of time, Israeli military personnel will be added to EUCOM in
Germany. EUCOM stands for United States European Command.
In preparation for anticipated Iranian missile attacks upon Israel,
the US is reportedly bringing its THAAD, Terminal High Altitude
Area Defense, and ship-based Aegis ballistic missile systems to
Israel. The US forces will join Israeli missile defense systems
like the Patriot and Arrow. The deployment comes with “the ultimate
goal of establishing joint task forces in the event of a
large-scale conflict in the Middle East”.

The
Jerusalem Post reports that US Lt.-Gen Frank Gorenc was in Israel
meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Brig.-Gen Doron Gavish,
commander of the Air Defense Division. While there, the US General
visited one of Israel’s three ‘Iron Dome’ anti-missile outposts. The
Israeli Air Force has announced plans to deploy a fourth Iron Dome
system in the coming months. Additional spending increases in the
Jewish state will guarantee the manufacture and deployment of three
more Iron Dome systems by the end of 2012. The Israelis are hoping
to eventually have at least a dozen of the anti-missile systems
deployed along its northern and southern borders.

In
a show of escalated tensions in the region, Iran test fired two
long range missiles today. One, called the Qadar, is a powerful
sea-to-shore missile. The other was an advanced surface-to-surface
missile called the Nour. According to Iranian state news, the Nour is
an ‘advanced radar-evading, target-seeking, guided and controlled
missile’. Additionally, the Iranian military reportedly test-fired
numerous other short, medium and long-range missiles. Yesterday,
Iranian authorities reported that they test-fired the medium-range,
surface-to-air, radar-evading Mehrab missile. Today is supposed to be
the final day of Iranian naval drills in the Straits of Hormuz.

Iran
recently made global headlines when it threatened to blockade the
Straits of Hormuz if Europe and the US went ahead with their boycott
of Iranian oil and the country’s central bank. One-quarter of the
world’s oil passes through that waterway every day. President Obama
has announced that a closure of the Straits was unacceptable and
vowed to take whatever measures are necessary to keep the vital
shipping lane open.

In
response to the Iranian missile tests this weekend, French
authorities were the first to respond, calling it a, “very bad signal
to the international community."We want to underline that the
development by Iran of a missile program is a source of great concern
to the international community,"the French Foreign Ministry said in
a written statement. Israeli officials suggested the flamboyant
Iranian military drills this weekend were a sign that international
sanctions on the country were taking a heavy toll and that any
additional boycotts, on its banks or oil industry, would be
crippling.

Israeli
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the large missile tests showed,
“the dire straits of Iran in light of the tightening sanctions
around her, including the considerations in the last few days
regarding the sanctions of exporting petroleum as well as the
possibility of sanctions against the Iranian Central Bank." While
the chances of Iran going through with its threat of closing the
Straits of Hormuz are slim, the deployment of thousands of US
troops and naval ships to Israel shows the US isn’t taking any
chances.

Russia
successfully test launched two Bulava intercontinental ballistic
missiles on Friday, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Igor Konashenkov
said. The missiles were launched from the Borey-class Yury
Dolgoruky nuclear-powered submarine in the White Sea and hit
designated targets at the Kura test range on Kamchatka, some 6,000
kilometers to the east.
This was the troubled Bulava’s 18th test launch. Only 11 launches
have been officially declared successful. But some analysts suggest
that in reality the number of failures is considerably larger.
Russian military expert Pavel Felgengauer said that of the Bulava's
first 12 test launches, only one was entirely successful.
Despite several previous failures, officially blamed on
manufacturing faults, the Russian military has insisted that there
is no alternative to the Bulava. The Bulava (SS-NX-30) SLBM carries
up to 10 MIRV warheads and has a range of over 8,000 kilometers
(5,000 miles). The three-stage ballistic missile is designed for
deployment on Borey-class nuclear submarines.

It
is world in which there is one master, one sovereign--- one center
of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making.
And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those
within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it
destroys itself from within. It has nothing in common with
democracy, which is the power of the majority in respect to the
interests and opinions of the minority. In Russia, we are constantly
being lectured about democracy. But for some reason those who
teach us do not want to learn themselves." Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s address to the Munich Conference on Security
Policy 2-10-07. The deployment of the US Missile Defense System in
Eastern Europe is a de-facto declaration of war on the Russian
Federation. As Russian President Putin said in a recent press
conference, "If this missile system is put in place, it will work
automatically with the entire nuclear capability of the United
States. It will be an integral part of the US nuclear capability."
This will disrupt the current configuration of international
security and force Russia to begin work on a new regime of tactical
nuclear weapons. This is a very serious development. Russia will
now have to rethink its current policy vis a vis the United States
and develop a long-range strategy for fending off further hostile
encroachments into former-Soviet states by NATO.

Welcome to the new Cold WarPutin
cannot ignore the gravity of the proposed system or the threat it
poses to Russia’s national security. Bush’s Missile Defense is not
defensive at all, but offensive. It thrusts US military bases--with
nuclear infrastructure and radar--up to Russia’s doorstep giving
the US a clear advantage in "first-strike" capability. That means
that Washington will be able to intimidate Russia on issues that
are of critical international importance. Putin cannot allow this.
He must force Bush to remove this dagger held to Moscow’s throat.Bush’s Pyrrhic Victory at the G-8The
central issues on the docket at the G-8 meetings were downplayed in
the media. The press primarily focused its attention on the
"anticipated" conflict between Bush and Putin. But, the brouhaha never
materialized; both were respectful and gracious. President Bush,
however, was adamant that his plan for missile defense in
Czechoslovakia and Poland would go ahead according to schedule.
Putin, for the most part remained politely silent. His objections
were censored in the media. But less than 10 hours after the
closing ceremonies of the G-8, Putin fired off the first salvo in
what will certainly be remembered as "the war that brought down the
Empire". Putin addressed 200 corporate leaders at the
International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg and his comments
left little doubt that he had already settled on a plan for
countering Bush’s missile shield in the Czech Republic. Putin’s speech
articulated his vision of a "Moscow-centered" new world order
which would create a ``new balance of power''--less dependent on
Washington. He said, ``The new architecture of economic relations
requires a completely new approach. Russia intends to become an
alternative global financial center and to make the ruble a reserve
currency for central banks.""The
world is changing before our eyes.'' Countries that yesterday
seemed hopelessly behind are today the fastest growing economies of
the world. Institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the
IMF are ``archaic, undemocratic and inflexible''. They don’t ``
reflect the new balance of power.''Putin's speech is defiant rejection of the present system. We can
be sure that it has not passed unnoticed by anxious mandarins in
the US political establishment. Russia is announcing the beginning
of an asymmetrical war; designed to cripple the United States
economically, weaken the institutions which have traditionally
enhanced its wealth, and precipitate a shift of global power away
from Washington. Putin’s challenge to the US dollar is particularly
worrisome. He emphasizes the inherent unfairness of the current
system, which relies almost entirely on the dollar and which has an
extremely negative effect on many smaller countries’ economies and
financial reserves."There can be only one answer to this challenge," he said. "The
creation of several world currencies and several financial centers."Putin’s
remarks are a direct attack on the dollar and its position as the
de facto international currency. He imagines a world where goods
and resources are traded in rubles or "baskets of currencies"--not
just greenbacks. This would create greater parity between the
countries and, hence, a more even distribution of power. Putin's
vision is a clear threat to America’s ongoing economic dominance.
Already, in the last few months, Norway, Iran, Syria, UAE, Kuwait,
and Venezuela have announced that they are either cutting back on
their USD reserves or converting from the greenback to the euro or a
"basket of currencies". Dollar hegemony is at the very center of
American power, and yet, the downturn is visible everywhere. If the
dollar loses its place as the world’s "reserve currency"; the US
will have to pay-down its monstrous current account deficit and
live within its means. America will lose the ability to simply
print fiat money and use it in exchange for valuable resources and
manufactured goods. Putin is now openly challenging the
monetary-system that provides the flow of oxygen to the American
superpower.Can he carry it off?What
kind of damage can Russia really inflict on the dollar or on the
many lofty-sounding organizations (WTO, World Bank, IMF, NATO and
Federal Reserve) which prop up the US Empire? Russia’s power is
mushrooming. Its GDP is leaping ahead at 8% per annum and by 2020
Russia will be among the five biggest economies in the world. It now
has the third largest Forex reserves in the world and it is
gradually moving away from the anemic dollar to euros and rubles.
Nearly 10% of its wealth is currently in gold. Russia has also
overtaken Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading supplier of petroleum.
It produces 13% of the world’s daily output and has the world’s
largest reserves of natural gas. In fact, Putin has worked
energetically to create the world’s first Natural Gas cartel—an
alliance between Russia, Qatar, Iran and Algeria. The group could
potentially control 40% of the world’s remaining natural gas and set
prices as it sees fit. Putin’s ambitions are not limited to the
energy sector either---although he has strengthened the country by
turning away foreign investment and "re-nationalization" vital
resources. As Pavel Korduban says in his recent article "Putin
Harvests Political Dividends from Russian Economic Dynamism"; Putin
intends to expand beyond energy and focus on technological
modernization:"The
shift in official discourse to "innovations" reflects an attempt to
reorient economic policy from the goal of consolidating the status
of "energy superpower" to the emphasis on industrial modernization
and catching up with the technological revolution. The key role in
formulating this new policy is given to Sergei Ivanov, who
promised that by the year 2020 Russia would gain leadership
(measured as 10% of the world market) in such high-technology
sectors as nuclear energy, shipbuilding, aircraft, satellites and
delivery systems, and computer software."Putin
has also strengthened ties with his Central Asian neighbors and
engaged in "cooperative" military maneuvers with China. "Last month it
signed deals with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to
revive the Soviet-era united system of gas pipelines, which will
help Russia strengthen its role of the monopoly supplier from the
region". (Reuters) He has transformed the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) into a formidable economic-military
alliance capable of resisting foreign intervention in Central Asia
by the United States and NATO. The CIS is bound to play a major role
in regional issues as the real motives behind the "war on terror"
are exposed and America's geopolitical objectives in Central Asia
become clearer. So far, Washington has established its military
bases and outposts throughout the region with impunity. But the mood
is darkening in Moscow and Beijing and there may be changes in the
future. We should also remember that Putin is surrounded by ex-KGB
agents and Soviet-era hardliners. They’ve never trusted America's
motives and now they can point to the new US bases, the
"colored-coded" revolutions, the broken treaties and the projected
missile defense system--to prove that Uncle Sam is "up to no good".

Putin
sees himself as leading a global insurgency against the US Empire.
He represents the emerging-market economies of China, India and
Brazil. These 4 nations will progressively overtake the "old order".
Last year 60% of the world's output was produced outside the G-7
countries. According to Goldman Sachs, by 2050 Brazil, Russia, India
and China will be the world's leading economies. The transition
from "superpower rule" is already underway. The centers of
geopolitical power are shifting like giant tectonic plates. The
trend is irreversible. The deployment of Bush’s missile defense
system will only hasten the decline of the "unipolar-model" by
triggering an asymmetrical war, where Forex reserves, vital
resources and political maneuvering will be used as the
weapons-of-choice. War with Russia is pointless and preventable.
There are better choices than confrontation.

The West's Most-Cherished Desire: The Disintegration of the Russian Federation

Old bear does not dance to Western tunes

-Should
a "revolution" take place, the primary target of shock will be Russia
itself. The worst nightmare would be the disintegration of the Russian
Federation. This is the result the West most desires to see most.

-Personal
trust is the reason that facilitated the strategic relations between
China and Russia. However, the foundation of these ties is built upon a
mutual dream of national revival which outstripped the interests that
connected the West and Russia. China wants a stable Russia. The West is
on the opposite side.

Will a
"Russian Spring" occur? Russian police have arrested hundreds of
protestors recently. But the pro-liberal protestors claimed that they
will not succumb to such moves and continue to hold protests every day.
This scenario is similar to the initial phrase of the Arab Spring,
where the revolutionary movement was triggered by small- scale
protests. It is hard to predict the outcome of the current protest on
Russia's election scandal, but everything is possible.Vladimir
Putin's rule will face increasing scrutiny and it will become much
harder for him to withstand the challenges. However, this is not a
victory for the West. Putin losing authority will not automatically
gain the West influence in Russia. The future of Russia will be shaped
according to its own interests. This is the principle set by its
democratic environment. Putin's own authority came because he put the
country back to track. He saved Russia from the confusion and chaos
when the USSR disintegrated two decades ago.The relation
between election and a candidate's authority is complicated. However
the latest State Duma elections did not suggest that Russia's
understanding of its national interests has become obscure, as during
the Yeltsin era. Ballots lost by the United Russia are now in the
pocket of the Communists and the Liberal Democrats, which does not
reflect the expanding of the West's ideology.Russian interests
are dominated by a combination of geopolitics, culture and ambition.
The differences and even the hostility between the West and Russia will
persist if these interests contradict each other, no matter who sits
in the Kremlin. Should a "revolution" take place, the primary target
of shock will be Russia itself. The worst nightmare would be the
disintegration of the Russian Federation. This is the result the West
most desires to see most.Russian society does not want to
undergo this nightmare again. This concern has partly resulted from
Putin's lasting authority. The unity United Russia can bring to this
country is limited, but unity under democracy is not that convincing
either. The painful lessons of the past will make Russians more
reluctant to give up their trust in strongman politics to its democratic
peers.Personal trust is the reason that facilitated the
strategic relations between China and Russia. However, the foundation of
these ties is built upon a mutual dream of national revival which
outstripped the interests that connected the West and Russia. China
wants a stable Russia. The West is on the opposite side.Russia
has undergone many tough challenges. The "revolutions" in the
Middle-East is a cakewalk compared to the movements the former communist
state experienced. The country has made several twists and turns in
choosing its own path. Russia is not similar to the countries swept by
the Arab Spring. It is a unique state and will remain so.

Putin warns of outside forces that wish to split Russia and take over its natural resources

2007

President
Vladimir Putin said Sunday that there are people in the world who
wish to split up Russia and take over its vast natural resources,
and others who would like to "rule over all mankind," a veiled
reference to the United States. Speaking in front of Moscow's iconic
St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square, Putin told a group of
military cadets and youth group members that while "an overwhelming
majority of people in the world" are friendly toward Russia, there
are some who "keep saying to this day that our nation should be
split.""Some
believe that we are too lucky to possess so much natural wealth,
which they say must be divided," Putin said, speaking on National
Unity Day. "These people have lost their mind," he added with a
smile. Many Russians fear that their country's rapidly declining
population and enormous natural wealth could one day leave it
vulnerable to outside predators. But the theme of invasion was
central to Sunday's holiday, which Putin created by decree in 2005
to commemorate the defense of Russia from a Polish-Lithuanian
incursion in the beginning of the 17th century.Putin
on Sunday referred to the battle as a turning point in Russia's
history that united the nation. Not missing a chance to take a shot
at the United States, Putin said there are people who "would like
to build a unipolar world and rule over all of mankind." He counted
them as among the minority in the world who do not maintain a
"friendly attitude" toward Russia. He said any attempt to establish
a unipolar world was doomed to fail."Nothing of this kind has ever occurred in our planet's history, and I don't think it will ever happen," the president said.

Putin
has been highly critical of the United States for the invasion of
Iraq and opposes its plans to build a limited missile shield in
central Europe. Concern about outside forces wanting the division of
Russia arose last month during Putin's three-hour nationally
televised call-in show. A Siberian worker asked Putin about comments
he said were made years ago by former U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright suggesting that Siberia had too many natural
resources for one country."I know that some politicians play with such ideas in their
heads," Putin replied, adding that such talk was "political
erotica."Putin,
whose two-term presidency ends next year, said Russia will
continue playing an active role in foreign policy and there are
many people who look to Russia as a defender of small nations'
rights and interests. Intended to invoke patriotism, National
United Day has been hijacked by extreme nationalist groups that
call for ridding Russia of foreigners and returning the
pre-communist monarchy.

President
Vladimir Putin vowed Thursday that Russia would defend its vast
natural resources in Siberia, saying Russia was 'not Iraq' and would
not allow outsiders to gain control of its resources. "Thank God
Russia is not Iraq. Russia has the strength and the means to defend
itself," Putin said during a live television question-and-answer
session with Russians from around the country. He dismissed talk of
any outside country getting direct control over Russia's abundant
natural resources in Siberia and contrasted the situation with that
in Iraq.

"The best example are the events in Iraq, a country
which was challenged in defending itself and which had enormous oil
reserves. And everyone has seen what happened there. They learned
to shoot at each other. But so far, establishing order has not
really worked out."

He was responding to a question from a
resident of the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, who had asked him to
comment on a remark by a former US official suggesting that Russia
should share the natural wealth of Siberia. "I know you are worried
about this,' Putin said. 'I know that these kinds of ideas are
circulating in the minds of some politicians,' he added, without
elaborating. Putin said Russia was working on strengthening and
modernising its army and navy as was its 'right' and added that 'we
will continue to do this."Source: http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/...fx4233392.html

Russia Warns to Take Tough Action against Military Strike on Iran

Moscow
warned the western powers to avoid a military threat against Iran,
cautioning that Russia would regard any military intervention
linked to Iran's nuclear program as a threat to its own security. The
escalating conflict around Iran should be contained by common
effort, otherwise the promising Arab Spring will grow into a
"scorching Arab Summer," Moscow's departing Ambassador to NATO
Dmitry Rogozin warned on Friday."Iran
is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus. Should anything
happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military
hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security,"
Rogozin, who is now Russia's deputy prime minister, said two days
after the killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran by a hitman on a
motorcycle.

"We
are definitely interested in the non-proliferation of the weapons
of mass destruction," Rogozin said on Friday. "But at the same time,
we believe that any country has the right to have what it needs to
feel secure.Dmitry
Rogozin, who served as Russia's special envoy to NATO in 2008-2011,
was appointed deputy prime minister by Vladimir Putin in December.
On Friday he was bidding farewell to his NATO colleagues in the
alliance's headquarters in Brussels.Rogozin,
often described as an anti-Western hawk will oversee Russia's
defense sector when he returns to Moscow. The remarks came as
Kremlin Security Council head Nikolai Patrushev, who is close to
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said Israel was pushing the
United States towards war with Iran.

Kremlin Seeks to Alarm Southern Neighbors About Cooperating with the Pentagon

It
is well-known that the aggressive foreign policy of Iran’s clerical
regime makes Central Asian governments uneasy. Most obviously, Iran
and its Caspian neighbors have a longstanding dispute over Tehran’s
expansive claims to offshore energy resources. In addition, the
Central Asian states have repeatedly rejected Tehran’s application to
elevate its observer status within the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization to that of a full member. Furthermore, they have limited
educational and cultural exchanges with Iranians that could give
Tehran opportunities to proselytize radical versions of Islam in
Central Asia.At the same time, no Central Asian government
appears enthusiastic about a major US military operation against
nearby Iran or about additional UN sanctions on Tehran given their
economic ties with Iran. For example, Turkmenistan has such important
bilateral projects as the Dostluk Water reservoir, the
Tejen-Serahs-Mashhad railway, and the Korpeje-Gurtguyi and
Dovletabat-Serahs-Khangeran gas pipelines. Iranians also purchase
large quantities of electricity from Turkmenistan (trend.az, February
21).Kyrgyzstan has minimal economic ties with Iran, but it does
host the most prominent US military base in Central Asia at Manas
International Airport, which the Pentagon has used for the last decade
to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. In December
2011, President Almazbek Atambayev cited the need to end this US
presence at Manas because “Iran poses a big threat, whose missiles
can easily reach Kyrgyzstan. Just imagine what could happen if
Iranians, firing missiles against the US base, were to hit peaceful
the population?” (24.kg news agency, December 29, 2011).Russian
officials have sought to play up fears of a confrontation involving
Iran by warning Central Asians that the United States could exploit
any basing and other military privileges (such as overflight
rights) to entangle them in a war with Iran.In a February 22
media briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich
warned that “[i]t cannot be excluded that this site [Manas] could be
used in a potential conflict with Iran,” which he said would
violate the Pentagon’s lease agreement with Bishkek. Lukashevich
further claimed that, “[t]he worries are shared not just by
Kyrgyzstan – where a debate has erupted about the risk of a
retaliatory strike from Iran – but other Central Asian countries.”The
Russian Foreign Ministry has also claimed that the Western powers
were exploiting the Iranian nuclear issue to “re-carve the
geopolitical map of the large hydrocarbon-rich region that includes
Central Asia” (The Hindu, www.thehindu.com/news/international/article2932313.ece, February 25).In
his subsequent meeting with Atambayev, President Dmitry Medvedev
extended Russia’s warning to other former Soviet republics to
encompass Western pressure on Syria since developments related to
“the Middle East (around Iran and Syria, and certain other
countries) have direct influence on the situation in our region”
(www.kremlin.ru/news, February 24). Medvedev called on these
governments to cooperate closely with Russia to address this threat:
“And Russia considers it extremely important to coordinate with our
closest partners and allies our efforts to ensure greater stability
[in Central Asia], and especially in this case when negative
developments could occur” (www.kremlin.ru/news, February 24).The
US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, responded that the “Manas
Transit Center contributes to the international effort to stabilize
and secure Afghanistan and will only be used for that purpose”
(https://twitter.com/#!/McFaul/status/172405940342104064). Indeed, it is
most unlikely that the US would attack Iran from Central Asia given
the superior and better-situated US military facilities and
platforms in the Persian Gulf. For example, carrier-based aircraft
could bomb Iranian nuclear targets without needing to fly through
any other countries’ airspace.Iranians would invariably seek
to retaliate for a US or Israeli military strike against Iran, but
the most likely targets would be against US interests and allies in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, but
also the South Caucasus, which has already emerged as a battleground
between US and Iranian proxies.It is important to recall
that these Russian remarks came in the context of Atambayev’s
February 24 visit to Moscow, his first since becoming Kyrgyzstan’s
new president in December. Before the trip, Atambayev had focused
his remarks on Russia’s failure to provide sufficient compensation
to Kyrgyzstan for hosting its military bases (Kyrgyz Kabar news
agency, February 24).According to Kyrgyzstan’s Defense
Ministry, Russia owes $15 million for leasing its military
facilities, which includes four military bases, a torpedo testing
facility, military communication center and a radio seismic
laboratory (Rian, February 24). Furthermore, Atambayev told Radio
Ekho Moskvy that Russia has failed to train Kyrgyz pilots, as
required by their bilateral defense agreements (Rian, February 24,
2012). The media coverage on Kyrgyzstan’s military bases since
Atambayev’s return has focused on Atambayev’s repeated insistence that
the Pentagon stop using the base after the US lease expires in
summer 2014.Moscow’s war rhetoric is likely to continue even
after Putin’s almost inevitable return to the Russian presidency
because it helps keep Iran alienated from the United States
(preserving the Russians’ dominant economic position there), deepen
Central Asian fears about supporting an enduring US military presence
in their region (Russia would like the capacity to kill any Western
military presence at will as a means of influencing Western actions
on Georgia, missile defense, NATO expansion, etc.), and remind
Washington and other governments (including Beijing) that the Kremlin
still considers the post-Soviet space as a zone where Moscow
exercises strategic primacy.

Over
400 modern ground- and sea-based ICBMs, 8 ballistic missile
submarines, about 20 general purpose attack submarines, over 50 surface
ships and some 100 military-purpose spacecraft, over 600 modern
aircraft, including fifth-generation fighters, more than a thousand
helicopters, 28 regimental sets of S-400 surface-to-air missile
systems, 38 division sets of Vityaz air defense systems, 10 brigade
sets of Iskander-M tactical missile systems, more than 2,300 modern
tanks, some 2,000 self-propelled artillery systems and guns, and more
than 17,000 military vehicles. These are the figures of the massive
rearmament program announced by Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin
in an article published on February 20 by state-owned newspaper
Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

The
article, titled “Being Strong is a Guarantee of Russia’s National
Security,” shows Putin’s determination to preserve Russia’s
deterrence power facing US plains aimed at achieving nuclear
primacy. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the gap between
Russia’s declining arsenal and US constantly improving systems is
actually increasing to the point of making the age of MAD nearing an
end. Nevertheless, Russian nuclear deterrent is still formidable,
as Moscow can count on more than 2,000 operational strategic
warheads deployed along the entire territory of the federation and
the seas plowed by the submarines of the Russian Navy. But what is
more, in case of nuclear crisis Russia can still rely on several top
secret bases inherited by the Soviet Union, and not only.

Russia’s
national command and control system is dispersed among different
hardened underground locations. According to US sources, two of the
main secret bases are located in the Ural Mountains, where
conventionally European Russia ends and greater Siberia begins. The
first one is the Yamantau Mountain complex. Located near the closed
town of Mezhgorye, in the Republic of Bashkortostan, this site is
not far from Russia’s main nuclear weapons lab facility,
Chelyabinsk-70. Military analysts suspect that Yamantau’s huge
400-square-mile underground complex houses nuclear warhead and
missile storage sites, launch control and several full-blown nuclear
weapons factories designed to continue production after a
hypothetical nuclear war begins.

The
second secret base in the Urals is an underground command and
control center located at the Kosvinsky Mountain, about 850 miles
east of Moscow. The site hosts the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces
alternate command post, a deep underground command post for the
general staff built to compensate for the vulnerability of older
command posts in the Moscow region. The facility, finished in early
1996, was designed to resist US earth-penetrating warheads and is the
Russian version of the American Cheyenne Mountain Complex.

Besides
Yamantau Mountain and the Kosvinsky Mountain underground complex,
Russia can still count on the Sherapovo bunker site, south of Moscow.
Initially built in the 1950s, it was the primary command center for
the Soviet leadership. The Kremlin is connected to Sherapovo and
other bunkers by a secret subway line. According to a 1988 Pentagon
report, once at Sherapovo, the Soviet leaders could have conduct a
nuclear war by sending orders and receiving reports through a highly
redundant communications system. Russia’s general staff has a
similar facility some 20 kilometers away from Sherapovo, known as
Chekhov. Both sites can accommodate an estimated 30,000 people each
one.

Although
Russia has tried to keep secrecy about its underground bases,
information about these sites have circulated anyway. According to a CIA
report, “the command post at Kosvinsky appears to provide the
Russians with the means to retaliate against a nuclear attack.” The
construction of the facility has actually helped Moscow to
counterbalance the decline of its nuclear forces following the end of
the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this sense, the
existence itself of top secret bases within the territory of the
Russian Federation is the best means of deterrence against any first
strike intention, and thereby a warranty to world peace.

The August 2008 war in the Caucasus
revealed the new strategic realities that have emerged in the Black
Sea / Caspian Region in recent years. These realities have been
driven by overly ambitious Russian policies and have weakened Western
strategic interests in the region. The conditions created
immediately after the war appeared more favorable to Russia and less
favorable to other nations in the region, most notably Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Ukraine.

But the world economic crisis and its impact on Russia, as well as the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute
in January 2009, have diminished Russia’s gains and further damaged
Russia’s reputation as a reliable energy supplier to Europe. In the
long run, Russia may face very serious problems of separatism on its
own territory due to Russia’s recognition of the breakaway provinces
of Georgia. Given these uncertainties, it may be natural to expect
that there will be stronger drive to get away from: 1) dependency on
Russian energy in Europe; and 2) dependency on Russian transit
infrastructure in Caspian /Central Asia region. In the long run, that
may be reflected by Russia’s weakened strategic position in Europe
and Central Asia.The
August war in Georgia demonstrated some risks associated with the
functioning of the transit energy corridor in the southern Caucasus. It
also demonstrated the need for broader security guarantees for a
region that is vital to European and global energy security.
The most important finding of the paper is that while the corridor
has a tremendous potential to augment its transit capabilities with
new pipelines, railroads, marine and air ports, the security of the South Caucasus
transportation corridor cannot be taken for granted. Moreover,
Western countries will need to ensure stability and security in the
region in order for the corridor to meet its full potential.The Russian invasion of Georgia established new strategic realities in Eastern Europe
and Central Eurasia. It was the culmination of Russia’s impressive
comeback in Eastern-European and Central-Eurasian affairs that has
occurred in response to high energy prices, a weak US strategic
position, European division and uncertainty in Turkey’s strategies. The
war made clear that Russia is willing to use force to deepen and
promote its interests, while western powers are not. This fact was
predictable, but not certain to some. The war in Georgia helped firmly
establish this reality and may also indicate that even NATO members
may not be fully protected by their commitment to that organization.
As the Russia-Georgia conflict demonstrates, military force has once
again become a major factor in Russian foreign policy. Nevertheless,
economic provisions and energy incentives are still the primary tools
employed by Russia to further its foreign policy interests abroad.At
the same time, the weak Western response to Russia actions may send
the wrong signal to the Russian leadership about the level of freedom
it has to use force in what Russia considers its sphere of
influence. Furthermore, the weak economy and the declining popularity
of Russian leaders may create internal instability within Russia and
tempt Russian leaders to once again utilize force to further their
objectives. Europe and the United States need to carefully consider
their policy response to such scenarios.Another major finding
of this paper is that energy is an important factor in the stability
of any country and, in Georgia’s case, domestic energy security
is also the foundation for stability of transit, and development of
the entire regional infrastructure. The physical damage to the
infrastructure and the environment in Georgia as a result of the war was
tangible but not large. The damage to Georgia’s transportation
system is repairable in a relatively short period of time. The
pipelines are gradually approaching pre-conflict volumes of the oil
and natural gas shipments although the shipments via railway, ports,
and air have all shown signs of decline. Instead, the key problem
emerged with the malfunctioning of the largest energy facility in the
country - the Enguri hydro power plant.The reservoir for the
power plant is located on Georgian-controlled territory while the
actual electricity production plant is located on Abkhaz/Russian
controlled territory. The Georgian leadership had to make a very
difficult political decision in accepting the offer of the Russian
company Inter RAO (the subsidiary of the giant Russian state-owned
energy monopoly Inter RAO United Energy Systems (UES)) on joint
operation of the power plant. While there is a positive history of
activities of the Inter RAO UES
in Georgia, the Russian state-owned company’s control of a key
electricity supplier for the entire country is not the best political
and economic security outcome for Georgia.Lastly,
the paper argues that the initial damage that the war inflicted upon
the political reliability of the transit corridor is gradually
diminishing and that new opportunities are emerging. The complete
reversal of this damage can be possible but will depend on U.S. and EU
policy, the role of Turkey, internal stability in the Caucasus region,
and Russian policy in Central Asia and the Caucasus. It is important
to remember that when the initial decision to revitalize the energy
corridor through Georgia and Azerbaijan was made in the mid 1990s,
the security environment was extremely difficult and there was no
infrastructure to support shipment of oil through the corridor, yet
leadership of the United States and Turkey supported that decision and
helped to implement it. Today’s environment is much more favorable
considering the functioning infrastructure and greater demand for
Caspian energy.New natural gas discoveries in Turkmenistan and the next stage in oil and gas developments
in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan will require additional export capacity
and a tough battle is ahead between the different export options,
each supported by state sponsors with competing interests. It is
significant in this context that Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an
agreement on November 14, 2008, to develop a Trans-Caspian oil
transportation that will include onshore oil pipeline in Kazakhstan and a tanker fleet in the Caspian Sea
to ship Kazakh oil to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline and on
to the world markets. As it was indicated at the Budapest summit
devoted to the Nabucco pipeline project
on January 27, significant progress has been made on the development
of a natural gas link between the Caspian and Europe, and Georgia
has an important role to play.These developments indicate
that the energy producing countries of the region are determined to
seek the diversification of export options, but they need to be
supported by the United States, and in particular European, NATO, or
Turkish security guarantees. After all, Western Europe and Turkey are the major consumers and beneficiaries of Caspian energy resources.

That Was No Small War in Georgia — It Was the Beginning of the End of the American Empire

2008Tskhinvali,
South Ossetia — On the sunny afternoon of August 14, a Russian army
colonel named Igor Konashenko is standing triumphantly at a street
corner at the northern edge of Tskhinvali, the capital of South
Ossetia, his forearm bandaged from a minor battle injury. The spot
marks the furthest point of the Georgian army’s advance before it was
summarily crushed by the Russians a few days earlier. “Twelve
Georgian battalions invaded Tskhinvali, backed by columns of tanks,
armored personal carriers, jets, and helicopters,” he says, happily
waving at the wreckage, craters, and bombed-out buildings around us.
“You see how well they fought, with all their great American training
— they abandoned their tanks in the heat of the battle and fled.”

Konashenko
pulls a green compass out of his shirt pocket and opens it. It’s a
U.S. military model. “This is a little trophy — a gift from one of my
soldiers,” he says. “Everything that the Georgians left behind, I
mean everything, was American. All the guns, grenades, uniforms,
boots, food rations — they just left it all. Our boys stuffed
themselves on the food,” he adds slyly. “It was tasty.” The booty,
according to Konashenko, also included 65 intact tanks outfitted with
the latest NATO and American (as well as Israeli) technology.Technically,
we are standing within the borders of Georgia, which over the last
five years has gone from being an ally to the United States to a
neocon proxy regime. But there are no Georgians to be seen in this
breakaway region — not unless you count the bloated corpses still
lying in the dirt roads. Most of the 70,000 or so people who live in
South Ossetia never liked the idea of being part of Georgia. During
the violent land scramble that occurred after the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the South Ossetians found themselves cut off from their
ethnic kin in North Ossetia, which remained part of Russia. The
Russians, who’ve had a small peacekeeping force here since 1992,
managed to keep the brewing conflicts on ice for the last 15 years.
But in the meantime, the positions of everyone involved hardened. The
Georgians weren’t happy about the idea of losing a big chunk of
territory. The Ossetians, an ethnic Persian tribe, were more adamant
than ever about joining Russia, their traditional ally and protector.The
tense but relatively stable situation blew up late in the evening of
August 7, when on the order of president Mikheil Saakashvili,
Georgia’s army swept into South Ossetia, leveling much of Tskhinvali
and surrounding villages and sending some 30,000 refugees fleeing
north into Russia. Within hours, Russia’s de facto czar Vladimir
Putin counterattacked — some say he’d set a trap — and by the end of
that long weekend the Georgians were in panicked retreat. The Russian
army then pushed straight through South Ossetia and deep into Georgia
proper, halting less than an hour’s drive from Saakashvili’s
luxurious palace. All around me is evidence of a rout. A Georgian
T-72 tank turret is wedged into the side of a local university
building, projecting from the concrete like a cookie pressed into ice
cream. Fifty yards away you can see the remains of the vehicle that
the orphaned turret originally was part of: just a few charred parts
around a hole in the street, and a section of tread lying flat on the
sidewalk. Russian tanks now patrol the city unopposed, each one as
loud as an Einstrzende Neubauten concert, clouding the air with
leaded exhaust as they rumble past us.But listening to
Colonel Konashenko, it becomes clear to me that I’m looking at more
than just the smoldering remains of battle in an obscure regional war:
This spot is ground zero for an epic historical shift. The dead
tanks are American-upgraded, as are the spent 40mm grenade shells
that one spetznaz soldier shows me. The bloated bodies on the ground
are American-trained Georgian soldiers who have been stripped of
their American-issue uniforms. And yet, there is no American cavalry
on the way. For years now, everyone from Pat Buchanan to
hybrid-powered hippies have been warning that America would suddenly
find itself on a historical downslope from having been too reckless,
too profligate, and too arrogant as an unopposed superpower. Even
decent patriotic folk were starting to worry that America was
suffering from a classic case of Celebrity Personality Disorder,
becoming a nation of Tom Cruise party-dicks dancing in our socks over
every corner and every culture in the world, lip-synching about
freedom as we plunged headfirst into as much risky business as we
could mismanage. And now, bleeding money from endless wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, we’re a sick giant hooked on ever-pricier doses of
oil paid for with a currency few people want anymore. In the history
books of the future, I would wager that this very spot in Tskhinvali
will be remembered as both the geographic highwater mark of the
American empire, and the place where it all started to fall apart.I
first visited Georgia in 2002 to cover the arrival of American
military advisers. At the time, the American empire was riding high. A
decade after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia seemed to be
devolving into an anarchic and corrupt failed state, while the U.S.
just kept getting stronger. Within months of President George W.
Bush’s swearing-in, Time ran a column boasting that America didn’t
need to accommodate Russia anymore because it had become “the dominant
power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome.” That same
year we invaded Afghanistan without breaking a sweat. The New York
Times magazine proclaimed: “The American Empire: Get Used to It.” A new
word, hyperpower, was being used to describe our history-warping
supremacy.The military advisers were dispatched to Georgia
ostensibly to train that country’s forces to fight local Al Qaeda cells,
which everyone knew didn’t exist. In reality, we were training them
for key imperial outsourcing duties. Georgia would do for the
American Empire what Mumbai call centers did for Delta Airlines:
deliver greater returns at a fraction of the cost. They became a
flagship franchise of America Inc. It made sense for the Georgians,
too: Their erratic and occasionally violent neighbor Russia wouldn’t
fuck with them, because fucking with them would be fucking with us —
and nobody would dare to do that. The imperial masterminds who
fixated on Georgia as an outsourcing project must have figured we’d
score a two-fer by simultaneously winning strategic control of the
untapped oil in the region and also managing to stick a giant bug up
the raw southern rim of our decrepit old rival Russia.To
enact this plan, America deftly organized and orchestrated the
so-called Rose Revolution, which I witnessed in Tblisi in 2003.
Saakkashvili’s predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, was judged
unreliable, so in a multilayered soft putsch that used every lever of
influence at our disposal, the U.S. replaced him with Saakashvili, a
Columbia-educated hothead who speaks perfect neocon. In the Western
media, the Rose Revolution was portrayed as 1776 redux (starring
Saakashvili as George Washington with a permanent five o’clock
shadow). A more perfect vassal for George W. Bush’s foreign policy
could not have been found than “Misha,” as he is fondly known. He
stacked his cabinet with young right-wing fanatics, and made sure he
had a coterie of mountain-biking American advisers with him at all
times. This crew included John McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser
Randy Scheunemann, whom Misha paid more than $1 million in lobbying
fees.This project in Georgia was just a high-profile example
of a broader Bush strategy. All around Russia’s southern border,
America laid claim to former Soviet domains. After 9/11, Putin
infuriated many of his army commanders and security chiefs by
agreeing to let the U.S. set up bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan
for the Afghan invasion. Once the Taliban was removed from power,
America decided that it felt like staying. After all, who was going
stop us? Given the sorry state of their affairs, the Russians
certainly weren’t. So by 2002, Putin was stuck with American pie
dripping down his cadaverous bloodless face. But after years in which
Russia rebuilt itself on the back of soaring commodity prices (today
it’s the world’s largest producer of oil), our advantages in global
power politics have started to tilt Putin’s way. Slowly and quietly he
got American forces thrown out of Uzbekistan and all but sidelined
in Kyrgyzstan. And then, here in Georgia, he seized the opportunity
to really hammer home his point.During my visit to Georgia in
2003, if someone had told me that in five years American military
advisers would be hightailing it from their main base in Vasiani to
avoid getting slaughtered by advancing Russian forces, I would have
slapped him with a rubber chicken for insulting my intelligence. Yet
there they were: gasping for air in the lobby of the Tblisi Sheraton,
insisting off the record that the conflict was all the Georgians’
fault, not theirs.Why Misha decided to attack is still a
mystery. He claims he was forced to level Tskhinvali to preempt a
Russian invasion, but that doesn’t make military sense, and has since
been debunked by both Georgians and OSCE monitors on the ground; others
believe that he struck because, with Bush on his way out, he thought
this would be his last chance to regain control of South Ossetia.
Another theory popular among journalists and pundits is that the
notoriously “hotheaded” (some would say “mentally unstable”) Saakashvili
was suckered into his doomed invasion by a clever Russian ruse, part
of Putin’s plan to punish the West for recognizing Kosovo and other
crimes of imperial insensitivity. Personally, I’d vote for number
two. (Putin has offered an alternative hypothesis: that Misha
intentionally sparked a war in order to boost John McCain’s prospects
in the U.S. election.)Prior to the offensive of August 7,
Georgians cut off Russian television and Internet sites in South
Ossetia, then rained Grad rockets and artillery on the capital and
surrounding villages. The early-hours blitz was, as one Ossetian told
me the day before, “shock and awe.” At least half the population
fled into Russia. People I spoke to in the refugee camps, mostly
women, were still in a daze — they told of fleeing their burning
villages under fire, of Georgians raping and murdering, of grenades
thrown into civilian bomb shelters, of tanks running over children.
(It was impossible to corroborate these individual stories, as is
generally the case in trying to sift fact from inflamed rumor in
refugee camps.)Reliable casualty counts for the broader
conflict are still all but impossible to get, but as of late August
the Russians admit having lost 64 soldiers, and the Georgians a
combined 215 soldiers and civilians. In both cases, the real number
is probably much higher. On the civilian front, Ossetian sources
claim that 1,500 were killed in the Georgian assault — Putin called
it a “genocide” — but many Westerners dismiss that figure. Privately,
however, American advisers and defeated Georgian commanders admit to
“total defeat.” Indeed, Arkady Ostrovsky of the Economist, a British
reporter who has long been close to Saakashvili, told me that on the
day of the cease-fire, the Georgian leader spoke of shooting
himself, and was only dissuaded when word came of a supportive
statement by Condi Rice. “It was sad to watch,” Ostrovsky told me. “I
should have been more critical of Saakashvili back when it might have
counted. A lot of us should have.”That’s exactly the kind of
full-spectrum smackdown the Russians were aiming for. And Konashenko
wants us all to see it, so he offers to take me and some other
reporters to the city of Gori in occupied Georgia. Russia seized
control of the city at the end of hostilities, essentially cutting
its foe in two and leaving it exposed to Vladimir Putin’s whims.
“We’ll show you Gori — the city is spotless,” Konashenko says
cheerfully. “We could have destroyed it, but we didn’t. Of course,
there’s a little bit of damage here and there” The next morning, I
head toward Georgia in the back of a Russian army truck, winding
through the countryside of South Ossetia. Many villages have been
burned and completely leveled. In the minority ethnic- Georgian
communities, the sour odor of death hangs in the air, as those who
survived the Ossetians’ reprisal attacks had little time to bury
their dead friends and relatives.When we arrive in Gori, the
locals seem unnerved by our presence. They shy away as aggressive
reporters point cameras and pursue them along the cobblestone streets
for a quote. At first, some say that they are grateful that the Russian
forces are there to protect them from marauding Ossetian and Chechen
irregulars, who had swept through parts of Georgia murdering
civilians and looting homes before the Russians arrived. After a half
hour, the Georgians we talk with get used to our presence. A few
summon the nerve to quietly pull me aside and whisper things like,
“Are the Russians ever going to leave?” and “We don’t have any
information here. Is this going to be Russian territory forever?” In
Gori’s vast central square there is shattered glass on the
sidewalks, but as Konashenko promised, the city is largely intact. It
is also starkly empty, as if a virus or neutron bomb had wiped out
the civilian population. Most of the city’s inhabitants have long
since fled to Tblisi, along with the soldiers. As we hop out of the
army trucks, one of the Russian commanders points to a limp banner
flying at half-mast over the polished-granite administration building
on the far side of the square, “You see?” he says. “The Georgian
flag is still flying. This is Georgian territory — we’re not annexing
it like the media says.” This kind of boast, conquering a country
and then making a big noble show of respecting its sovereignty, was
something that had once been reserved for America’s forces. How
quickly history has turned here. The other Western journalists
fan out for some atrocity hunting, digging for signs that the
Russians might have dropped a cluster bomb or massacred civilians.
The foreign-desk editors back home have been demanding proof of
Russian evil, after largely ignoring Georgia’s war crimes in South
Ossetia. It’s a sordid business, but the reporters are just following
orders.After an hour in the 90-degree heat, I head over to
the city’s central square, where I stumble across a stunning
spectacle: dozens of Russian soldiers doing a funky-chicken victory
dance in the Georgian end zone. They’re clowning around euphorically,
shooting souvenir photos of each other in front of the
administration building and the statue of Stalin (Gori’s most famous
native son) while their commanders lean back and laugh. I approach
Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Bobrun, assistant commander of the Russian
land forces’ North Caucasus Military District — the roughest
neighborhood in Western Eurasia — and ask him how he feels now, as a
victorious military leader in a proxy war with America.“I have
never been so proud of Russia — magnificent Russia!” Bobrun crows,
an AK strapped over his shoulder. “For twenty years we just talked and
talked, blabbed and blabbed, complained and complained. But we did
nothing, while America ran wild and took everything it could. Twenty
years of empty talk. Now Russia is back. And you see how great Russia
is. Look around you — we’re not trying to annex this land. What the
fuck do I need Georgia for? Russia could keep this, but what for?
Hell, we could conquer the whole world if we wanted to. That’s a
fact. It was Russia that saved Europe from Genghis Khan. Russia could
have taken India and the Middle East. We could take anything — we
took Alaska, we took California. There is nothing that Russia could
not take, and now the world is being reminded again.”“Why did
you give California back?” I asked. It has always baffled me why a
country would abandon prime coastal real estate for the frozen swamps
of Siberia — I always assumed it was because the Russians were
ashamed when they found themselves holding onto a chunk of this
planet as perfect as California: like B-list nerds who successfully
crash a Vanity Fair Oscar party, but within minutes of their little
triumph, skulk out of the tent out of sheer embarrassment, knowing
they never belonged there in the first place. “We gave it all back
because we don’t need it,” Borisov boasted, puffing out his chest.
“Russia has enough land, what the hell do we need more for. But if
others want to start something, this is what will happen. Russia is
back, and I am so proud.”As the day wore on, the Kremlin press
pool organizers finally rounded us up, and we headed back again along
the same victory trail. It was on this second visit to ruins of
Tskhinvali, as dusk approached and the violence seemed to already
acquire a kind of abstract tone, that I started to realize that I was
looking at something much bigger than the current debate about
Russian aggression or who was more guilty of what — pulling the camera
much farther back on this scene, I understood that I was looking at
the first ruins of America’s imperial decline. It’s not an easy thing
to spot. It took years after the real collapse for Russians to
finally accept that awful reality, and to adjust accordingly, first
by retrenching, not overplaying an empty hand, slowly building up
without making any loud noises while America ran wild around the
world bankrupting itself and bleeding dry. And now it’s over for
us. That’s clear on the ground. But it will be years before America’s
political elite even begins to grasp this fact. In the meantime,
Russia is drunk on its victory and the possibilities that it might
imply, sending its recently-independent neighbors into a kind of
frenzied animal panic. Experience has taught them that it’s moments
like these when Russia’s near abroad becomes, once again, a
blood-soaked doormat in the violent epochal shifts — history never
stopped here, it just froze up for a decade or so. And now it’s
thawing, bringing with it the familiar stench of bloated bodies,
burned rubble, and the sour sweat of Russian infantry.We have
entered a dangerous moment in history — America in decline is
reacting hysterically, woofing and screeching and throwing a tantrum,
desperate to prove that it still has teeth. Which it does — but not
in the old dominant way that America wants or believes itself to be.
History shows that it’s at this moment, tipping into decline and
humiliation, when the worst decisions are made, so idiotically
destructive that they’ll make the Iraq campaign look like a mere
training exercise fender-bender by comparison.Russia, meanwhile,
is as high as a Hollywood speedballer from its victory. Putting the
two together in the same room — speedballing Russia and violently
bad-tripping America — is a recipe for serious disaster. If we’re
lucky, we’ll survive the humiliating decline and settle into the new
reality without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of
the world. But when that awful moment arrives where the cognitive
dissonance snaps hard, it will be an epic struggle to come to our
senses in time to prevent the William Kristols, Max Boots and Robert
Kagans from leading us into a nuclear holocaust which, they will assure
us, we can win against Russia, thanks to our technological
superiority. If only we have the will, they’ll tell us, we can win once
and for all.

The sight of the BRICS has been an eyesore for the developed
countries ever since its inception. The sense of irritability has now
given way to disquiet bordering on hostility. There is a compelling
urgency that BRICS is assuming habitation and a name. True, nothing of
an earth-shaking nature has emerged from the New Delhi summit. Yet,
there are new stirrings that herald the potential for a BRICS surge.
And that causes disquiet to the developed world. Simply put, as the
Delhi Declaration by the BRICS countries reminds is, it is a “platform
for dialogue and cooperation amongst countries that represent 43% of
the world’s population” in a multi-polar world. That is saying a
lot.

There is nothing like BRICS
in the developed world today. The G-7 has become a relic of history.
The view across the Atlantic is dismal, with Europe and the United
States struggling with their respective economic crisis, discarding
pretensions that they are world champions.

The Delhi Declaration makes an undisguised bid for strengthened
representation of emerging and developing countries in the institutions
of global governance”. This is no vacuous claim. Because, BRICS also
has a special experience to share – having “recovered quickly from
the global crisis.” The West has not heard this sort of idiom before.
This is not the global South asking plaintively for “more”. This is
an open demand for “power sharing”.

The West has never been spoken to like this before in all these
centuries since the Industrial Revolution. The tides of history are,
clearly, turning. The Delhi Declaration suggests: “We believe that it
is critical for advanced economies to adopt responsible macroeconomic
and financial policies, avoid creating excessive global liquidity and
undertake structural reforms to lift growth that create jobs. We
draw attention to the risks of large and volatile cross-border
capital flows being faced by the emerging economies. We call for
further international financial regulatory oversight and reform,
strengthening policy coordination and financial regulation and
supervision cooperation, and promoting the sound development of
global financial markets and banking systems.”

The developing world has never before admonished the developed world
in such fashion. The BRICS has asserted its credentials to make this
demand since it represents economies that are having broad-based
economic growth and are “significant contributors to global recovery.”
The Delhi Declaration goes on to criticize the slow pace of quota and
governance reforms in the International Monetary Fund and in the
functioning of the World Bank and questions the West’s prerogative to
head these institutions. Significantly, BRICS is raising its voice even
as Russia is preparing to assume the Presidency of the G20 in 2013.

One concrete outcome of the Delhi summit is the agreement to
consider the possibility of setting up a new Development Bank for
mobilizing resources for infrastructure and sustainable development
projects in BRICS and other developing countries to “supplement” the
role of the World Bank and other regional financial institutions.

The idea is to shake off the continued dominance of the developed
countries over these financial institutions. Ideally, what the World
Bank and the whole network of existing regional development banks would
prefer is to continue to use the BRICS money and keep the existing
pattern of western hegemony. Whereas, a BRICS bank will threaten the
entrenched western practice to use the international financial
institutions to prescribe and impose economic policies to the developing
countries thereby promote the commercial interests of the developed
countries and even establish political hegemony.

The implications are far-reaching for the geopolitics of Africa, in
particular. The Delhi summit has sought a report on the setting up of
a development bank by the next annual BRICS summit in South Africa.
Interestingly, South Africa is representing the voice of the African
continent within BRICS. Again, Russia’s entry into the World Trade
Organization would phenomenally change the BRICS’ capacity (and
political will) to safeguard the rule-based multilateral trading
system and influence a successful and balanced outcome of the Doha
Round.

Equally, the Delhi summit
witnessed the conclusion of the Master Agreement on Extending Credit
Facility in Local Currency under BRICS Interbank Cooperation
Mechanism and the Multilateral Letter of Credit Confirmation Facility
Agreement between our EXIM/Development Banks. Without doubt, these
are going to be useful enabling instruments for promoting intra-BRICS
trade. A furious attack has begun from the West. The trades leveled at
the BRICS tells their own story:

• BRICS countries subscribe to “different values”.

• The rest of the BRICS abhor China’s rise.

• Russia is a “declining country” and doesn’t have “much in common”
with the rest of the BRICS as a significant player in the world
economy, apart from its vast energy reserves.

• Therefore, BRICS countries aren’t “natural allies”.

• Indians are frightened of encirclement by China and are full of
angst about the “very big imbalance” between them, although they have
“lots of economic interests in common”.

• China, in turn, is concerned about the spectre of a US-led Asian alliance arrayed against it, which Includes India.

Arguably, there is merit in some of these arguments, but then, BRICS
process is about steadily enlarging the commonality of interests
among the member countries and never about creating a bloc of
like-minded nations on the basis of their so-called “values”. It is a
pragmatic process that gives space and autonomy for the member
countries, which in turns provides BRICS also the latitude to work on
creating over time a critical mass.

The fact of the matter is that the critical mass is building and is
already visible. As the BRICS gains confidence, it is spreading its
wings. The summit in 2011 in China took the baby steps in the
direction of harmonizing the member countries’ positions on
international political issues. The BRICS took a step forward in the
Delhi summit to adopt a common stance on Syria, the number one “hot
spot” in world politics today. The Delhi Declaration puts accent on a
Syrian-led inclusive political process and national dialogue and
calls on the world community to respects that country’s independence,
territorial integrity and sovereignty.

The so-called “Delhi Action Plan” approved by the summit underscores
the political will on the part of the member countries to strengthen
the BRICS process. It envisages regular and frequent meetings of the
foreign ministers, finance ministers, trade ministers, agriculture
ministers, health ministers and central bank governors (plus meetings
at senior officials’ level on various areas of cooperation) on the
sidelines of relevant international events. The intention is to
coordinate a BRICS common stance on a wide range of shared interests
globally.

What needs to be
highlighted is the decision to hold “stand-alone” meetings of the BRCS
High Representatives responsible for national security. In the
Indian context, the National Security Advisor is the key figure at
the highest level of policymaking in foreign and security policies –
and, interestingly, is also the designated point person to steer the
course of India-China relationship.

The BRICS holds interesting possibilities for India to work with China on the global issues.
Viewed from another angle, the BRICS process explores the common
aspirations of the two Asian powers in the emergent world order. They
are at complete liberty to fast track issues. The heart of the matter
is that BRICS provides a friendly, unhurried enviornment in which
meaningful cogitations can take place between member countries at a
bilateral level as well. Lest it be overlooked, on the sidelines of
the summit in Delhi, Indian and Chinese leaderships took time out to
discuss the bilateral relationship.

When the western critics viciously lampoon that the BRICS lack
“mortar”, et al, they are barking up the wrong tree. The BRICS is not
meant to be a steel-and-glass edifice. It is a process borne out of a
common will to blend shared aspirations regarding a new world order.
Given the BRICS economies’ growing share of the world GDP, they have a
claim to greater participation in the global architecture. While
dogs may bark, the caravan is determined to roll on. That is the
message coming out of the BRICS Delhi summit.

It
has been a long time since I was as acutely aware of Russia’s
importance as during the recent conference on the Syrian crisis in
Ankara. The conference participants, mostly delegates from Turkey, the
Syrian opposition and several regional countries, said that everything
depends on Russia, which alone can tip the scales. They said that if
not for Russia’s veto in the UN Security Council and military
assistance to Bashar Assad, the country would have a new regime and
would be democratizing by now. They said it again and again, closing
their ears to Russia’s arguments about other circumstances that may be
more important and painful.

Representatives
of the opposition and the majority of Turkish experts said, often
quite convincingly, that the Syrian government could fall any day.
However, belief in Assad’s imminent fall has diminished in the past two
months. What is the reason for the relative stability of the Syrian
regime, which has withstood the impact of the Arab Spring for over a
year?

First, there is a large
group of people in Syria who stand to lose from a revolution. According
to Russian experts, only 15 to 20 percent of Syrians firmly support
Assad but a third of the population, comprising of influential
minorities, Christians (including Armenians), Kurds, Druze and Ismailis
fear that any change would only worsen their lives and that the
overthrow of the Alawis would bring Sunnis to power who would start
persecuting them all. This is why the Syrian population is split in
two, creating conditions for a protracted civil war and allowing the
government to claim that they have popular support. The opposition
claims that the minorities are gradually shifting towards it but there
are no facts to prove this.

Second,
the military balance is not in favor of the opposition; the fall of
Homs was a major victory for Assad, changing the international view of
events in Syria and quelling speculation about Assad’s imminent
defeat.

Third, the regional
context is favorable to Assad. The Libyan operation, which was hailed
as a NATO success, has dampened arguments for military intervention.
On the one hand, European countries, which bore the brunt of the
conflict in Libya, have used a considerable part of their military
potential. On the other hand, the rise of Islamic parties in the wake
of the Arab Spring has increased Western doubts about actively
supporting the opposition. Although the recent meeting of the Friends
of Syria group of Western and Arab nations sought to bolster the
opposition, the West is not eager to expedite the delivery of weapons.

Fourth,
Gaddafi’s Libya had no friends because it had harmed neighboring and
more distant countries too much, but Assad’s Syria can expect support
from Iran, Russia and China and at least silent neutrality from
neighboring countries ranging from Iraq to Jordan, which dislike the
idea of an all-out war so close to home. And
lastly, after the UN Security Council adopted a resolution that
ultimately led to the invasion of Libya, Russia and China have refused
to support any document if it leaves the window open even a crack for
military intervention. They say that NATO and other participants in the
Libyan operation took advantage of the resolution to overthrow
Gaddafi.

Russia has never been
criticized so sharply as in the case of Syria. For its support of the
Syrian regime, Russia has been accused of complicity in mass murder
and a desire to profit from arms deals. Less emotional people wonder
why Russia is supporting a doomed regime instead of diversifying its
ties and building bridges into the future. Yet Moscow continues to
stand its ground, disregarding the possibility of its own isolation.

The
game is far from over and Russia has not lost the latest round. Of
course, business with Syria cannot be carried on as before because
Assad will be pressured to step down, although the conditions of his
departure may differ. Those who will replace him will not favor ties
with Russia anyway, as the Libyan experience has shown. Russia played
the key role in the overthrow of Gaddafi as its veto could have
prevented the intervention and hence the revolution. And yet, the first
thing the new authorities did is refuse to honor contracts with
Russia.

Moscow is not trying to
preserve its Syrian contracts but to reaffirm its status in
international affairs. By resisting powerful psychological and
diplomatic pressure, Russia has shown that although it has lost ground
in the Middle East (Syria is its last close partner in the region),
it is still a power whose opinion cannot be disregarded. Russian
diplomats have clearly said that it will not allow intervention to be
legalized through the UN Security Council. No country has so far
risked acting without a UN mandate in Syria, even though the opposition
is urging them on, as the Iraqi example is still fresh in their
memory. As a result, the Arab League and the West have launched
dialogue with Russia, which they condemned only the day before. Kofi
Annan’s plan and the UN Security Council’s statement in its support
were mostly brought about by Russia’s firm stance.

But
Russia’s possibilities are not unlimited; it can hardly achieve much
more. As for Annan’s plan, it should have been enacted a year or six
months ago at the latest. The sides have likely reached the point of no
return, as too much blood has been shed to hope for compromise.
Besides, talks cannot be held with unconsolidated opposition groups. Russia
must decide what it will do if violence in Syria erupts with fresh
force. Supporting the Syrian government may be logical but there is a
limit, after which Russia should think about selling its critical vote
in the Security Council to the highest bidder since the Syrian
opposition and their allies put so much stock in it.

Former Russian Gen.: Russia Is ‘Defending the Entire World From Fascism,’ Is Ready to Use Military Power to Defend Iran, Syria

Former member of Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov appeared on Russia Today TV
to boldly announce that Russia is “defending the entire world from
Fascism” — waged, of course, by the U.S. and Israel — and that his
country is ready to use military force to defend Iran and Syria from
its aggressors. He added that an attack on Syria or Iran would be an
indirect attack on Russia. The retired colonel also compared U.S.
presence in Libya to Hitler and his armies’ aggression against Poland
and later, Russia. The Following are excerpts from an interview with
Ivashov on RT February 1, 2012. Translations provided by the
ever-vigilant staff at MEMRI:

Interviewer:
“Dr. Leonid, do you think that these preparations and very large
maneuvers, which will soon be conducted by Russia, are meant as
preparation for war, or rather, a military strike against Iran?” […]

Leonid Ivashov:
“These maneuvers and training will demonstrate Russia’s readiness to
use military power to defend its national interests and to bolster its
political position. The maneuvers show that Russia does not want any
military operations to be waged against Iran or Syria. I assume that
the people in the West and in Israel who design the schemes for a large
geopolitical operation in the greater Middle East region draw a
direct connection between the situation in Syria and in Iran. Indeed,
these two countries are allies, and both are considered guaranteed
partners of Russia. The only question, therefore, is who they will try
to destroy first as a stable country: Syria or Iran. […]

“A
strike against Syria or Iran is an indirect strike against Russia and
its interests. Russia would lose important positions and allies in
the Arab world. Therefore, by defending Syria, Russia is defending its
own interests. “In addition, Russia is thus defending the entire world
from Fascism. Everybody should acknowledge that Fascism is making
strides on our planet. What they did in Libya is nearly identical to
what Hitler and his armies did against Poland and then Russia. Today,
therefore, Russia is defending the entire world from Fascism.”

It
sets an important precedent in international relations, and is
perhaps the clearest sign of declining US power in the Middle East. For
the first time since the end of the Cold War, Russia and China have
effectively thwarted the United States and its allies from pursuing its
interests in a fiery Middle Eastern flashpoint, Syria.

The
Russian-Chinese double veto at the UN Security Council - the last in
February - signalled to the West that the two powers were drawing a
red line on Syria. Notably, China's second veto on Syria was only its
eighth in history, highlighting the importance of the matter to
Beijing. The message was clear: UN-sponsored regime change, military
intervention, or arming of Syrian rebels - as seen in Libya - would
never pass.

Understanding the
regional and global battle over Syria is to recognise that no external
power in the world has Syrian democracy or human rights as the
fundamental drive behind its policies on the crisis. Despite the fluff
coming from Western capitals, no leader among them is truly concerned
for the welfare of the Syrian people, as noted by the West's double
standard silence to Bahrain's ongoing revolution. Likewise, calls for
Syrian democracy emanating from the most repressive regime in the world
in Saudi Arabia are laughable to say the least. And as we are so
regularly told, Russia, China and Iran are the antithesis to the liberal
democratic values the West espouses to represent.

What
the West and its Gulf Arab proxies saw in Syria was an opportunity to
either snatch the Arab world's influential outpost for Iran and
Russia, or destroy its regional power altogether by way of a
destructive civil war. The former seemed almost completely out of
reach short of US military intervention. After spending his entire
first term disengaging from wars in the Middle East, the last move
president Barack Obama would make in an election year is committing a
broke United States to yet another Middle East war.

Delegating
intervention to its NATO allies was always going to be an unlikely
option. Despite French and British eagerness to strike Moamar Gaddafi's
forces in Libya last year, the US once again eventually assumed the
bulk of the workload. The threat of a civil war still beckons, as
oil-rich Gulf states ponder arming rebels, but decisive military
victories by the Syrian army in recent months have made it increasingly
unlikely that president Bashar al-Assad will be dislodged by force,
either from within or beyond.

The
international wrangling does not delegitimise the legitimate demands of
the Syrian people for democracy and an open society ruled by fairness
and equal treatment. Rather, it highlights that for the majority of
the Syrian revolution thus far, the battle for Syria has been mostly
waged beyond its borders.

The
Syrian revolution became no longer a question of the inalienable
rights of the Syrian people, but - as so often in the Middle East - a
pretence for an intense struggle for regional supremacy. The Saudis
and Qataris threw all gloves off when Saudi King Abdullah openly
declared his support for the revolt in August 2011. The king's call
was not one of solidarity with the Syrian people, but a declaration of
proxy war against its regional nemesis, Iran. Riyadh and Doha saw an
opportunity to gain a strategic Arab ally on the simple calculation
that the majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, and thus Assad -
member of the minority Alawi sect - would meet the same fate of the
fallen Arab dictators before him.

Turkey
also hedged its bets on a quick Assad downfall, a strategic blunder
that is now under sharp criticism from leading Turkish commentators
and opposition leaders as the Syrian dictator appears to have held
sway. Although it still hosts Syrian opposition groups and armed
rebels, Turkey has notably toned down its harsh rhetoric of Assad in
recent weeks. The US and Europe have also moved away from explicit
calls for regime change, to endorsing - alongside Russia and China -
UN envoy Kofi Annan's six-point plan for a political solution.

Annan's
plan is a clear victory for Russia and China, as it reinforces their
position on what it considers to be the sensible approach to resolving
the Syrian crisis. Annan's peace plan suggests a "Syrian-led
political process" echoing Moscow and Beijing's repeated calls for
dialogue among Syrian parties and without external interference. It
also calls for a cessation of violence "by all parties" without
apportioning blame to either the regime or the opposition. Russia had
previously drafted a UN Security Council resolution blaming both sides
for the crisis, a move rejected at the time by France as
"unacceptable" as it could not equate the crimes of rebels to the
regime. And the only hint of foreign intervention in Annan's plan is a
UN monitoring team to oversee a ceasefire.

This
contrasts sharply with the two previous Western-backed UN resolutions
that suggested a regime change via transition, and opened the door
for further action without compliance, or as Russia and China
interpreted, military action. Moscow and Beijing got the Annan plan
they wanted, denying the West its traditional position of
decision-maker in the Middle East.

Last
week's "Friends of Syria" summit in Turkey, a gathering of Western
and Arab states alongside a number of Syrian opposition groups,
revealed only the lack of options available. The summit's pledge to
aid the opposition was as hollow as the rhetorical statements issued
in support of the revolution. The US promised communications equipment
- certain to defeat a heavily-equipped and trained Syrian army -
while Saudi Arabia and Qatar would use its oil-wealth to entice Syrian
generals to defect - a strategy it has deployed largely
unsuccessfully since mid-2011.

The
most telling international meetings were the summits that preceded
the "Friends of Syria" gathering. On March 29, Arab leaders met in
Baghdad, while the BRICS summit of emerging powers was underway in
Delhi. The Arab states, including Riyadh and Doha, had thrown its
backing behind Annan's Russian-friendly plan.

The
BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - showed its
new global clout by rejecting military action and endorsing dialogue
as the path to a solution. The BRICS have stood firm on Syria, and as
testimony to its growing global influence, have forced the West to
take a backward step. There will be no Libya-repeat in Syria, and
there will not be a pro-Western proxy emerging in Damascus anytime
soon. Civil war still remains a threat, albeit distant given the
rebels' devastating defeats in Homs and Idlib, and its inferiority to
the Syrian army.

The retreat of
the West from Syria does not, however, signal complete doom for the
Syrian revolution. Assad's forces may have won militarily, but large
segments of the Syrian population have broken their silence, and will
not return to the shadows. Indeed, overt Western and Gulf involvement
in the Syrian crisis created more rifts among Syrian activists than
resolved disputes. Many Syrian opposition activists and leaders that I
met in Syria have been dismayed at what they perceived was the
hijacking of the revolution by foreign powers for external interests.

But
the threat of Western intervention seems to have subsided, for now.
If Iraq was the catalyst for America's decline in the Middle East,
Syria has sounded the death knell as a resurgent Russia and emerging
China step up to the plate.

Russia
is back, at least in the minds of U.S. national security leaders. From
halting Iran's nuclear program to squeezing Syria's regime to
listening to President Obama's hopes for fewer nuclear arms, "Russia is
the key," as one former official says. Past-and-present Russian
President Vladimir Putin "still aspires for Russia to be a
superpower," says one former senior U.S. diplomat.

Next
week, U.S. officials will join Germany and its four other permanent
counterparts from the U.N. Security Council for talks with Iranian
leaders about Tehran's atomic weapons program. But that process, known
in diplomatic circles as the P5+1 talks, "is flawed," says Nicholas
Burns, undersecretary of state during George W. Bush's presidency. The
talks are flawed because China and Russia are P5 members, and have
long worked against American whims within the Security Council.

On
Iran, China has become the main stumbling block. Beijing has found
ways to avoid violating U.N. sanctions on Iran while becoming Tehran's
top trading partner, Burns said at a forum this week. In short, China
has ample economic and security reasons to help Iran. But in Moscow,
Burns says Washington might find an ally. "Russia does not want to see a
nuclear Iran," Burns said. "Russia has a more highly strategic view of
this than the Chinese do."

Moscow
has also joined Beijing in rejecting U.N. council measures that would
have dealt diplomatic blows to Syrian president Bashir al-Assad in his
brutal war against opposition elements, which has been frustrating
White House officials. But Russia's backing of Assad gives Washington
leverage over Putin because if Moscow also assists the Iranian regime,
"the Russians will hurt themselves long term in the region. We should
be playing on this," says Dennis Ross, a senior U.S. diplomat and
presidential adviser under Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

Meantime,
Putin could make or break what insiders say is a major foreign policy
goal for Obama's possible second term: Continuing to shrink the
number of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons. Obama talks often of his
vision of a "nuclear-free world," and has pushed hard for nuclear
weapons reductions between the Cold War foes. More pragmatic Obama
administration officials simply want nuclear arsenal cuts because they
feel the nation has more than enough and it would perhaps free up
billions.

The United States has
nearly 1,740 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles,
sub-based ballistic missiles, and warheads for heavy aircraft,
according to the Pentagon. Russia has around 1,490. Under a nuclear-arms
reduction pact struck last year, the U.S. and Russia are in the midst
of reducing their nuclear arsenals. But is Putin willing to do more?

The
Russians "seem to be going the other way," says Michele Flournoy,
Obama's former Pentagon policy chief, citing an renewed emphasis on
nuclear arms in military doctrine and increased atomic weapons spending.
"Even though a second Obama administration might see it possible to
do more reductions," Flournoy says, "the challenge is getting the
Russians to that point."

The Neocons’ Project for the New American Century: “American World Leadership” – Syria next to Pay the Price?

In
every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter, who
has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to
deceive and overawe the people.” (Eugene Debs, 1855-1926, speech Canton,
Ohio, 16th June 1918.) The
Project for the New American Century (PNAC), unleashed in June 1997,
has largely disappeared from the political radar, yet the mire, murder
and general mayhem the US, UK and dwindling “boots on the ground” allies
find themselves in, are seemingly rooted in its aims, which march
relentlessly on. PNAC
was founded under the Chairmanship of William Kristol, former Chief of
Staff to Vice President Dan Quale during the Presidency of George Bush
Snr. Kristol’s father, Irving Kristol has been described as the
“Godfather of Neoconservatism.” The
organization was: “ … dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: That
American leadership is good for America and the world.” Projects were
devised: “ … to explain what American world leadership entails.” (i) Consulting “the world” about the mind-numbing concept of a US planetary take-over was not a consideration. Little
time was wasted in advancing this new world order. On 29th May 1998
PNAC sent a letter (ii) to the then Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Newt Gingrich and to Senate Majority Leader, Trent
Lott. It referred to a letter sent to President Clinton four months
earlier: “expressing our concern” that U.S policy of “containment of
Saddam Hussein was failing.” Thus: “the vital interests of the United
States and its allies in the Middle East would soon be facing a threat
as severe as any we had known since the end of the Cold War.” Therefore
a strategy should be implemented to: “… protect the United States and
its allies from the threat of weapons of mass destruction (and) put in
place policies” that would topple the Iraqi leadership. Without
a glance towards international law, the letter continued: “.U.S. policy
should have as its specific goal removing Saddam Hussein’s regime …
Only the U.S. can (demonstrate) that his rule is not legitimate. To
accomplish (this) the following political and military measures should
be undertaken …” The first “measure to be taken” was what has now become
the blueprint for each planned overthrow of a sovereign government: “We
should help establish and support (with economic, political and
military means) a provisional, representative and free government of
Iraq in areas of Iraq not under Saddam’s control.” That
Iraq’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” was guaranteed in law
and by the United Nations was not an issue for consideration.
Signatories, a veritable “Whose Who” of neo-cons, included John Bolton,
Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, James
Wolsey, Zalmay Khalizad and PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan. Robert
Kagan is currently on Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Policy Advisory
Committee, his wife is Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the Clinton
headed U.S. State Department. Kagan’s loftily entitled book “The World
America Made”, was publicly endorsed by Barack Obama.Its theme was
referenced in his 2012 State of the Union address. Nor
has William Kristol gone away. In March 2011 he wrote an editorial in
the Weekly Standard arguing that US Military “interventions” in Muslim
countries (including the decimations of the 1991 Gulf War, the Balkans,
and destructions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq) should not be
classified as “invasions” but as “liberations.” Needless to say, he
backed US “intervention” in Libya, urging Conservative support. A more recent piece of war mongering was on Fox News (7th August 2012) when he opined: “I
went back and looked at the speech President Obama gave in March 2011
when he announced the very mild intervention in Libya, which did help to
get rid of Qaddafi. Every reason he gave for intervening in Libya is
there squared, in triplicate, for intervening in Syria, including the
strategic importance of getting rid of Assad and weakening Iran, and
we’re sitting there talking about ‘we really hope there won’t be
sectarian violence later on’, and, gee, this is kind of unfortunate.” “If
we are abdicating our role of helping to shape events in this
absolutely crucial part of the world, what does that say? Are we just
going to let other countries, ya know, play their games and stand back
as if it doesn’t affect U.S. national security?”On
the same programme Hillary Clinton talked of: “the day after” President
Assad. For anyone familiar with the 1983 film of that name portraying
the effect of a nuclear strike on Missouri, it was a chilling phrase. So
far it is not known if Kristol and Clinton have connected their
perceived threat to U.S. “national security”, the spectre of a dead
Ambassador, three colleagues, ten guarding them, burning or under attack
US Embassies around the world, generated by actions, provocations and
invasions, exactly as they advocated again on Fox News. Before
his next appearance on Fox, Kristol could do worse than peruse
Professor Hamoud Salhi’s address, presented at the Center for
Contemporary Conflict, of the (U.S.) Naval Postgraduate School in June
2004.(iii pdf) It is entitled: “Syria’s Threat to America’s National
Interest.” It is arguably even more pertinent now – and another reminder
of how long Syria has been in U.S. sights. He
opens: “Syria’s threat to America’s national interest in the Middle
East can only be understood in the context of U.S. plans to reconfigure
the Middle East. Knowing now that the motive for invading Iraq was
strategic, taking over Syria would give the United States further
strategic depth in the region … tipping the balance of power (even more)
in favour of the United States regional allies, Israel and Turkey.” Salhi
notes that “strategic pre-emption” is long central to American policy
in the Middle East, citing Rapid Deployment Forces during the Carter
Administration, Dual Containment under Clinton, Pre-emptive Doctrine
under George W. Bush. Polices, he holds, which: “have been instrumental
in maintaining hegemony in the region”, avoiding threats to U.S
interests, or to those of Israel,Turkey and the Gulf States. After
the 1998 US-UK Christmas bombing of Baghdad drew world-wide criticism,
Salhi points out that the often daily (illegal) bombing of Iraq by the
two countries was stepped up, with often daily sorties, “using the
latest technology” destroying what minimal economic infrastructure
remained: “under the pretext that they represented future threats.” It
was he contends, the “quiet war”, an ongoing tragedy little noticed by
the world. The
ground was – literally – being prepared for invasion, the trigger
finger ever itchier, any excuse sought. George W. Bush would later
explain that invading Iraq was necessary: “ … to advance freedom in the
greater Middle East …” (Emphasis mine.) 11th
September 2001 arguably gave the excuse to release the safety catches.
On 20th September 2001 PNAC sent a letter to Bush: “ … recommending the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein, even if no direct link to the 9/11 attack
were found.” Time to redeem American: “supremacy in global politics (and
for) regime changes in Iraq, Iran and Syria.” Michael
Ledeen, foreign policy expert, another neo-con minded Fox News
commentator, alleged to be a “strong admirer” of Niccolo Machiavelli,
regarded 1991’s Desert Storm attack on Iraq as a woeful missed chance
states Salhi. He notes Ledeen’s view that driving Iraqi troops from
Kuwait was wholly inadequate. Strategy should have been: “regime change
in Baghdad” (as) “one piece in an overall mission”, which should have
been: “one battle … against Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia.” Addressing
“The Syrian Threat”, Professor Salhi reminds of the U.S. Congress 2004
“Syria Accountability Act” which considerably financially weakened
Syria’s fragile economy, with further aims clearly paving the way to
regime change. That
achieved: “…the United States will have completed its final stage of
encircling Iran. This would further tip the region’s balance of power in
favour of Israel and ultimately open new doors” for the U.S. “active
involvement in toppling the Iranian regime.” PNAC’s
John Bolton, as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, had
testified before a Senate Sub-Committee on Syria’s threats to the U.S.,
which of course included terrorism and “weapons of mass destruction”
reminds Salhi – pointing out that Bolton could cite no specifics. The
more a Syrian danger was inflated, the more “justification” for an
attack. Conversely
he reasoned, a massively threatened Syria then: “has a motive to make
itself more threatening than it actually is.” (On a personal note his
comment had resounding resonance. In an interview with Iraq’s then
Foreign Minister Tareq Aziz prior to the invasion, I asked about the
weapons of mass destruction allegations relentlessly assailing Western
air waves . He side- stepped the question neatly: “Madam Felicity, we
too are afraid.” He of course knew the truth, Iraq was a sitting duck,
but U.S. uncertainty was slender hope for catastrophe averted.) In
a rare moment of intemperance, President Assad stated the country had
chemical weapons and would use them if invaded. As Aziz, he would hardly
declare there was no way to counter an invasion’s fearsome arsenal. Concluding,
the Professor pointed out that: “Syria’s economic capabilities do not
support the argument that Syria could become a threatening force in the
region … “ Further, it’s technological development falls to near nil as a
threat to the United States. A: “lack of interest in the sciences is
reflected in patents registered in the United States, a meager ten, as
against 16,328 for Korea and 7,652 for Israel (1980-2000.) Syria has a
long way to go before it could reach any kind of technological
development to be a threat to the United States.” Moreover:
“Syria’s leadership has pursued a principled foreign policy, built
around deeply rooted philosophical orientations and molded to conform to
the realities of the region.” Whilst
ideologically deeply rooted in Arab nationalism: “Syrian’s political
approach has been consistently pragmatic … a scenario in which Syria
acquires nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and uses them against
the United States or its regional allies is unlikely.” Further,
as with Iraq, which was minutely scrutinized by US satellites since the
late 1980’s (“We can see a Coca Cola can in a trash bin”, “If Saddam
sneezes we can see him reach for his handkerchief”) it is surely
happening with Syria, with Israel also openly admitting to Drone
surveillance.(iv) Professor
Salhi’s final point is that to deter ever mounting threats, Syria might
resort to acquiring WMDs, perceived as for their own protection.
However: “What is certain, is that using WMDs would be inconsistent with
Syria’s well established political approach.” What
is also certain is that in the event of an attack on Syria, the
worldwide attacks on US and allied interests and personnel of the last
few days will pale in to insignificance.

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Dear reader,

Arevordi will be taking a sabbatical to tend to personal matters. New blog commentaries will henceforth be posted on an irregular basis. The comments board however will continue to be moderated on a regular basis.

The last 20 years or so has also helped me see Russia as the last front against scourges of Westernization, Globalism, American expansionism, Zionism, Islamic extremism and pan-Turkism. I have also come to see Russia as the last hope humanity has for the preservation of classical western civilization, Apostolic Christianity and the traditional nation-state. This realization compelled me to create this blog in 2010. Immediately, this blog became one of the very few voices in the vastness of cyberia that dared to preach about the dangers of Globalism and the Anglo-American-Jewish alliance, and the only voice preaching the strategic importance of Armenia remaining within Russia's orbit. From about 2010 to 2015 I did monthly, at times weekly, commentaries about Russian-Armenian relations and Eurasian geopolitics in general. It was very difficult as I had no assistance in this endeavor. The time I put into this blog therefore came at the expense of work and family. But a powerful feeling inside me urged me to keep going; and I did.

When Armenia finally joined the EEU and integrated its armed forces into Russia's military structures a couple of years ago, I finally felt a deep sense of satisfaction and relaxation, as if a very heavy burden was lifted off my shoulders. I finally felt that my personal mission was accomplished. I therefore felt I could take a step back, as I really needed the rest. Simply put: I have lived to see the institutionalization of Russian-Armenian alliance. Also, I feel more confident now that Armenians are collectively recognizing the strategic importance of Armenia's ties with Russia. Moreover, I feel satisfied knowing that, at least on a subatomic level, I had a hand in the outcome. As a result, I feel a strong sense of mission accomplished. I therefore no longer have the urge to continue as in the past. In other words, the motivational force that had propelled me in previous years has been gradually dissipating because I feel that this blog has lived to see the realization of its stated goal. Going forward, I do not want to write merely for the sake of writing. Also, I do not want to say something if I have nothing important to say. I feel like I have said everything I needed to say. Henceforth, I will post seasonal commentaries about topics I find important. I will however continue moderating the blog's comments section on a regular basis; ultimately because I'm interested in what my readers have to say and also because it's through readers here that I am at times made aware of interesting developments.

To limit clutter in the comments section, I kindly ask all participants of this blog to please keep comments coherent and strictly relevant to the featured topic of discussion. Moreover, please realize that when there are several anonymous visitors posting comments simultaneously, it becomes very confusing (not to mention extremely annoying) trying to figure out who is who and who said what.Therefore, if you are here to engage in conversation, make an observation, express an idea or simply attack me, I ask you to at least use a moniker to identify yourself. Moreover, please appreciate the fact that I have put an enormous amount of information into this blog. In my opinion, most of my blog commentaries and articles, some going back ten-plus years, are in varying degrees relevant to this day and will remain so for a long time to come. Articles in this blog can therefore be revisited by longtime readers and new comers alike. I therefore ask the reader to treat this blog as a depository of important information relating to Eurasian geopolitics, Russian-Armenian relations and humanity's historic fight against the evils of Globalism and Westernization.